CHAPTER I RECOMMENDATIONS ANNEXES 19 CHAPTER VII 44 See Slovenia sets positive example in defending rights by acceding to Statelessness Convention, UNHCR, 17 March 2025. See The European Union, OSCE website, (no date). CHAPTER VI 43 CHAPTER V Population and housing census exercises present a valuable opportunity in most national contexts to improve the quality of statelessness statistics, which can be compared across the census cycles. The practice of collecting such data through a census should be encouraged in all OSCE participating States, with appropriate precautions (e.g., so as not to lead to arbitrary detention and/or futile efforts to remove stateless people who have been unable to regularize their status). CHAPTER IV Despite significant progress on the identification of statelessness, lack of nationality is still too often unrecognized or under-recorded throughout the world, including in many OSCE participating States. There are various challenges in identifying stateless people and quantifying statelessness. Stateless people who have no identity documents or residence permits are often in the most difficult situations and are the least likely to be counted in statelessness statistics. Stateless asylum-seekers and refugees are often counted in asylum statistics, but not necessarily identified as stateless, and refugee children are sometimes attributed the nationality of their parent(s), without a determination of whether the children actually hold that nationality. People from certain occupied or disputed States or territories are granted protection as stateless people in some OSCE participating States but not in others; and some stateless people are acknowledged to be ‘non-citizens’, but denied recognition as stateless people. CHAPTER III The OSCE participating States have different historical backgrounds, and it can be helpful to consider these variations in relation to differences in the causes of and remedies for statelessness. However, in spite of these differences, all OSCE participating States have enacted legislation which includes at least partial safeguards to prevent and/or reduce childhood statelessness. CHAPTER II was the most recent country to accede to the 1961 Convention, in March 2025.43 Many OSCE participating States are Parties to other relevant international treaties, as well as regional treaties which include obligations to prevent childhood statelessness. For example, almost all OSCE participating States are also Parties to the CRC, and many OSCE participating States are also members of the Council of Europe and bound by the European Convention on Human Rights (and subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights); and all Member States of the European Union are participating States of the OSCE and are bound by EU law and subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union.44