2 Analysis from the East-West Center Legal Identity and Statelessness ‘Statelessness’ is legally understood as not being recognized as a national under the operation of the laws of any state Those without proof of their legal identity face struggles from lack of access to a range of rights and services, with adverse impact on their living conditions. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that at least 4.2 million people around the world are not considered a national by any state.1 This is likely to be a significant underestimate as fewer than half of all states report any data on statelessness. The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion believes that even 15 million is a conservative estimate.2 Around 40 per cent of the identified global stateless population live in the Asia Pacific region; of these, some of the largest stateless populations live in Southeast Asia. With over one million stateless people, the Rohingya from Myanmar­—now displaced across Myanmar, Bangladesh, and other locations in the region—remain the most prominent case. The UNHCR has also reported large stateless populations in Thailand (475,009), Malaysia (108,332), Cambodia (57,444), Vietnam (30,581), and Brunei (20,863).3 Deficiencies in data collection mean the actual number of stateless persons in the region is likely higher. “Statelessness” is legally understood as not being recognized as a national under the operation of the laws of any state.4 The central international legal instruments meant to protect the rights of stateless persons are the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Southeast Asian states have a poor record in ratifying these conventions: only the Philippines has acceded to the 1954 Convention, and none have become party to the 1961 Convention. However, other human rights treaties with higher accession rates in the region, such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), stipulate important safeguards against statelessness. Moreover, inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 2012 ASEAN Human Rights Declaration provides under Article 18 that “every person has the right to a nationality as prescribed by law”. Over the past years, momentum has been building to tackle legal identity and statelessness as issues of global concern, and this has also reinvigorated the discourse in the region. The UNHCR has launched the ambitious “iBelong Campaign,” with the goal of eradicating statelessness by 2024.5 In 2015, UN member states also agreed to include a target in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aims to “provide legal identity for all” by 2030. The adoption of this target (16.9) reflects a growing recognition that official proof of legal identity has become a critical factor in development. While “legal identity” is not defined in the SDGs and has no definition in international law, the United Nations has adopted an operational definition that now focuses on birth registration.6 Birth registration is an important foundational step to establish other forms of legal identities, including nationality. Yet, birth certificates on their own are in most cases not the identity credential necessary to access rights, services, and protections. The most robust legal identity remains nationality, highlighting the prevalence of statelessness as a particular challenge. Causes of Statelessness and Legal Identity Problems in Southeast Asia The causes of statelessness and other legal identity problems are context-specific and interconnected. Common causes in Southeast Asia relate to colonial legacies; discrimination, including gender discrimination; weaknesses in civil registration systems; lack of protections for migrants; mobile lifestyles; and inadequate legal frameworks. The long shadow of colonial rule. Many situations of statelessness have deep roots in countries’ colonial history. Ethnicity and nationhood are Western-derived concepts that were embraced and modified by Southeast Asian countries during the twentieth century.7 Many state-building projects were confined to borders drawn by colonial powers and have since witnessed a dynamic reformulation of citizenship regimes, often nurtured by intercommunal tensions that had been exacerbated during colonial rule.8 It was at this point