Briefing Note for joint LIBE/PETI Hearing on Statelessness
Brussels, 29 June 2017- #EUstateless
The European Network on Statelessness (ENS) is a civil society alliance with over 110 organisational and individual
members in 40 countries, working to end statelessness and ensure that stateless people in Europe are protected and
access their human rights. ENS welcomes the opportunity to present at the joint LIBE/PETI statelessness hearing,
including on its Petition (0076/2017), which will be addressed at the hearing.
Introduction
To be stateless is to not be recognised as a citizen by any state. It is a legal anomaly that prevents people from accessing
fundamental civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights. This can mean for example that children cannot go to
school, pregnant women cannot access healthcare, those of university age are barred from continuing their studies,
and mothers and fathers are left unable to support their families. Statelessness affects more than 10 million people
around the world and at least 600,000 in Europe. Statelessness occurs in Europe both among recent migrants and
people who have lived in the same place for generations, such as many Roma who remain stateless because of ethnic
discrimination. Over 80% of the total reported European stateless population live in four countries – Estonia, Latvia,
the Russian Federation and Ukraine - and their statelessness can be traced back to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
While these numbers give an indication of the scale of statelessness in the region, data is sparse and often incomplete.
Statelessness remains, therefore, a largely hidden phenomenon. This is particularly so in a migratory context where
most European countries frequently encounter stateless people in their asylum systems, making this an issue that law
makers – as well as the authorities implementing the response to people seeking protection on the ground – must
seek to better understand and address.
Understanding and addressing statelessness in a migratory context
Among the stateless people living in Europe today there are individuals who arrived within mixed migration flows, and
were either stateless prior to departure from their country of origin or have since become stateless. Despite near
universal ratification of relevant international instruments such as the 1954 Statelessness Convention (which provide
a set of rights for stateless persons in a migratory context), there continues to exist a gap between this international
framework and respect for these rights in practice. Stateless people often face years of uncertainty, destitution and
repeated, lengthy immigration detention. Yet the solution to address these problems is relatively simple, and can be
achieved by the establishment of dedicated statelessness determination procedures that are fair, efficient and easily
accessible. This would enable states to identify and regularise stateless persons on their territory, thereby both
fulfilling their obligations under relevant international treaties and providing a sustainable solution for individuals who
cannot be removed. Yet currently only a handful of European countries have these procedures in place.
Europe as a ‘producer’ of statelessness
Today children are still being born in Europe without a nationality despite the existence of a clear normative
framework that should prevent this. Many have inherited their statelessness from stateless parents, while others are
the first in their family to experience statelessness, as the unsuspecting victims of a gap or conflict in nationality laws.
Recent research by ENS reveals that even among those European states that have acceded to relevant international
conventions, more than half are still failing to properly implement their obligations to ensure that children acquire a
nationality. ENS’s research identified a worrying array of problems in the detail of many nationality laws, as well as in
the laws governing procedures for birth registration, which helps to establish and document a child’s nationality.
Numerous countries have failed to include basic safeguards in the law, such as to grant nationality to a child born on
the territory who would otherwise be stateless, or to a child who has been abandoned and whose parents are
unknown. Even where laws do provide a remedy against childhood statelessness, there is evidence that the safeguards
do not always work in practice because these special rules are not widely known or there are no guidelines on how
and when to apply them. As a result of these and other gaps, thousands of children who have strong and clear
connections to Europe are growing up without the protection or sense of belonging that a nationality bestows. No
child chooses to be stateless, and this can never be in a child’s best interests..A specific area of concern is the
heightened risk of statelessness faced by the children of refugees and migrants born in exile. In 2015, almost 20,000
of the 1.3 million people who applied for asylum in the EU were recorded as being stateless and a further 22,000 were
of ‘unknown nationality’. In short, more than 3% of asylum applicants in the EU face a nationality problem. Meanwhile,