Statelessness is a mostly ignored, but serious and undeservedly neglected human rights crises of our time. The obvious question is how it is possible, in our over-regulated world, that someone is not a citizen of any country?
Rights related to nationality are quietly present in our everyday life, such as the right to education or the right to health care. We take all such rights for granted, although, even today, they represent desirable privileges for many.
Without a right to nationality, it is impossible to participate actively and fully in society and everyday life. The lack of nationality leads to marginalization, the formation of vulnerable groups, an increase in the number of persons and groups in vulnerable situations, and it perpetuates such situations through generations.
The extraordinary importance of a right to nationality was recognized by the international community, when the delegations drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Declaration) considered during the negotiations that it was necessary to enshrine not only the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of nationality in the human rights catalogue, but also the right to nationality.
In connection with the failure to enforce the right to nationality as enshrined in the Declaration, the international community realized that it was necessary to guarantee a unique legal status for persons without nationality, thereby providing them with protection and creating minimum rules encompassing their rights. As a result, the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons was signed in New York on 28 September 1954, which defines for the first time the rights of stateless persons and, of course, the concept of a stateless person, stipulating that a stateless person is a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law.
For most of us, it is unimaginable that we could not get or do something because we do not have a nationality. For even more people, it is unimaginable what it means to not have a nationality in any country.
Statelessness means that a person does not have a nationality of any kind. Today, statelessness affects nearly 12 million people around the world; this serious and unfair violation of law affects nearly 600,000 people in Europe, with 400,000 of them living in the European Union. Statelessness is one of the most serious forgotten human rights crises of our time, as a result of which millions of people live their lives below the minimum level of human dignity, excluded from society, marginalized. Living without a passport or identity card, invisible to the state and the authorities, presents many obstacles to a stateless person that are unimaginable for most people. As a result, stateless persons face obstacles in the exercise of rights that are taken for granted by citizens, such as the right to education, access to the labour market and health care, and opening a bank account.
There are many reasons for statelessness: for example, a person may become stateless due to a conflict between different laws governing the creation and acquisition of nationality (e.g. if someone is born to parents with different nationalities in a country different from the parents’ own country, and the child does not acquire citizenship in the territory by virtue of birth and he may also not inherit the nationality of either parent due to the laws of the countries of nationality of the parents). A child can also become stateless as a result of the discriminatory provisions in legislation on nationality, for example when a child may not inherit nationality from his mother or his father, possibly because they are also stateless persons or for other reasons. Statelessness can also occur during state succession, i.e. in the event that the successor state or states did not pay sufficient attention, possibly intentionally, to ensure that the legal situation of all persons living in the relevant territory is settled, so that they acquire a nationality. One of the main causes of statelessness is discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin, when measures are adopted that are discriminatory towards a certain group and ultimately result in the deprivation of nationality.
In connection with the eradication and elimination of statelessness, it should be stated, without denying the measures taken by the international community to eradicate statelessness, that success is solely a matter of political will, i.e. it depends on whether the states wish to find a solution to this legal anomaly and to settle and improve the legal situation of stateless persons living in their territory.
Source of image: COE
