Statelessness

• 1. Defining Statelessness And Global Scale

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  In 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees published an estimation of 4.4 million people worldwide as either stateless or of undetermined nationality. This figure represents an increase of 90,800 individuals compared to the end of 2021. The data itself remains incomplete because UNHCR lacks information from at least 22 countries where mass statelessness exists. Furthermore, these statistics do not include de facto stateless people who possess no legal identification to prove their nationality or legal existence. According to World Bank estimates, at least 850 million people fit that category of lacking documentation. The status of a person who might be stateless ultimately depends on the viewpoint of the state with respect to the individual or group. In some cases, the state makes its view clear and explicit; in others, its viewpoint is harder to discern. One may need to rely on prima facie evidence of the state's view, which can give rise to a presumption of statelessness.

• 2. Causes Of Nationality Deprivation

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  Conflicting nationality laws are one of the main causes of stateless births. At birth, nationality is usually acquired through right of soil or right of blood. Right of soil denotes a regime by which nationality is acquired through birth on the territory of the state. This is common in the Americas. Right of blood is a regime by which nationality is acquired through descent, usually from a parent who is a national. Almost all states in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania grant nationality at birth based upon the principle of jus sanguinis. A person who has neither parent eligible to transmit nationality by jus sanguinis is born stateless if born in a state which does not recognize jus soli. For example, if that child were born in India and neither parent had naturalized yet, then the child could be stateless since India confers nationality only to children born to at least one Indian parent. As of 2022, women in 24 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia, are legally restricted from transmitting their nationality onto their offspring. This can result in statelessness when the father is stateless, unknown, or otherwise unable to confer nationality to the child born to the unnaturalized mother in a foreign country without unrestricted jus soli.

• 3. Historical Evolution And Legal Frameworks

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  In international law, a stateless person is someone who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law. The international community has only been concerned with its eradication since the middle of the 20th century. In 1954, the United Nations adopted the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, which provides a framework for the protection of stateless people. Seven years later, in 1961, the UN adopted the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Before World War II, characteristics of statelessness could be observed among apostates and slaves in Islamic society. Statelessness also used to characterize the Romani people, whose traditional nomadic lifestyles meant that they traveled across lands claimed by others. The Nansen International Office for Refugees was an international organization of the League of Nations in charge of refugees from 1930 to 1939. It received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1938. Nansen passports, designed in 1922 by founder Fridtjof Nansen, were internationally recognized identity cards issued to stateless refugees. In 1942, they were honored by governments in 52 countries.

• 4. Regional Crises And Case Studies

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  Kuwait has the largest stateless population in the entire region. In 2024, Kuwait revoked the citizenship of 42,000 people in just six months. Most stateless Bedoon of Kuwait belong to the northern tribes, especially the Al-Muntafiq tribal confederation. A minority of stateless Bedoon in Kuwait belong to the Ajam community. Under the terms of the Kuwait Nationality Law 15/1959, all the Bedoon in Kuwait are eligible for Kuwaiti nationality by naturalization. From 1965 until 1985, the Bedoon were treated as Kuwaiti citizens and guaranteed citizenship. They had free access to education, health care and all the other privileges of citizenship. The stateless Bedoon constituted 80-90% of the Kuwaiti Army in the 1970s and 1980s until the Gulf War. In 1985 at the height of the Iran, Iraq War, the Bedoon were reclassified as illegal residents and denied Kuwaiti citizenship and its accompanying privileges. By 1986, the Bedoon were fully excluded from the same social and economic rights as Kuwaiti citizens. Since 1986, the Kuwaiti government has refused to grant any form of documentation to the Bedoon, including birth certificates, death certificates, identity cards, marriage certificates, and driving licences.

• 5. Administrative Barriers And Documentation

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  People may also become stateless as a result of administrative and practical problems, especially when they are from a group whose nationality is questioned. Individuals might be entitled to citizenship but unable to undertake the necessary procedural steps. They may be required to pay excessive fees for documentation proving nationality, to provide documentation that is not available to them, or to meet unrealistic deadlines. The United Nations Children's Fund estimated in 2013 that 230 million children under the age of 5 have not been registered. Not holding proof of nationality, being undocumented, is not the same as being stateless, but the lack of identity documents such as a birth certificate can lead to statelessness. Millions of people live, or have lived, their entire lives with no documents, without their nationality ever being questioned. Two factors are of particular importance: whether the nationality in question was acquired automatically or through some form of registration; whether the person has ever been denied documents on the basis that they are not a national. If registration is required, then the person is not a national until that process has been completed. As a practical matter, the longer a person is undocumented, the greater the likelihood that they will end up in a situation where no state recognizes them as a national.

• 6. UNHCR Interventions And Protection Efforts

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  In 2006, a statelessness unit (now a statelessness section) was established in Geneva, and staffing has increased both in headquarters and in the field. As part of an overhaul of UNHCR's budget structure in 2010, the budget dedicated to statelessness increased from approximately US$12 million in 2009 to $69.5 million in 2015. In addition to regular staff in regional and country offices, UNHCR has regional statelessness officers in Dakar, Senegal, for West Africa; Nairobi, Kenya, for the Horn of Africa; Pretoria, South Africa, for Southern Africa; San José, Costa Rica, for the Americas; Bangkok, Thailand, for Asia and the Pacific; Almaty, Kazakhstan, for Central Asia; Brussels, Belgium, for Europe; and Amman, Jordan, for the Middle East and North Africa. UNHCR has achieved some success with campaigns to prevent and reduce statelessness among peoples in the Crimean peninsula who were deported en masse at the close of World War II. Another success has been the naturalization of Tajik refugees in Kyrgyzstan, as well as campaigns that have enabled 300,000 Tamils to acquire Sri Lankan citizenship.