Human Rights Committee recommended that Belgium adopt legislation to grant nationality or residence permits to persons recognised as stateless.14 11. In 2012, UNHCR also made important recommendations to Belgium as part of its mapping study on statelessness in Belgium. In 2014, UNHCR issued its Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons 15 intended to guide government officials, judges and practitioners, as well as others involved in addressing both statelessness determination and the development and implementation of law and policies relating to the protection of stateless persons. UNHCR’s most recent recommendations to Belgium highlight the need to strengthen the protection of stateless persons, including by granting a temporary residence permit to applicants pending the statelessness determination procedure (SDP), a resident permit to recognised stateless persons, and introducing an SDP in law with full procedural safeguards.16 ISSUE 1 – Liberty and security of the person and arbitrary detention 12. Stateless people face a heightened risk of arbitrary detention particularly where procedural safeguards to identify and determine statelessness and related barriers to removal are lacking.17 Moreover, arbitrary and disproportionately lengthy detention can ensue when the particular vulnerabilities of stateless people are not addressed.18 13. In Belgium, there is no dedicated mechanism in place to identify stateless persons or persons at risk of statelessness in detention, yet there is systematic detention of people seeking international protection at the border, including on grounds of statelessness.19 There is evidence that some stateless persons are being detained (including Kuwaiti Bidoon), but data is extremely scarce due to the absence of mechanisms to identify stateless persons and collect reliable data. There is no mechanism in place to assess vulnerability prior to the decision to detain and statelessness is not mentioned among the categories of vulnerable persons in immigration law.20 As such, stateless persons may face prolonged periods of detention and/or repeated detention. In practice, no Human Rights Committee, Concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of Belgium, 6 December 2019, CCPR/C/BEL/CO/6, para. 30, available at https://undocs.org/CCPR/C/BEL/CO/6. 15 UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, 2014 http://www.unhcr.org/uk/protection/statelessness/53b698ab9/handbook-protection-stateless-persons.html 16 UNHCR, Améliorer la protection des réfugiés et des apatrides en Belgique et dans le monde, Mémorandum du HCR, August 2019, available at: https://www.unhcr.org/be/wpcontent/uploads/sites/46/2019/09/M%C3%A9morandum-2019-HCR-Am%C3%A9liorer-la-protection-desr%C3%A9fugi%C3%A9s-et-des-apatrides-en-Belgique-et-dans-le-monde.pdf 17 European Network on Statelessness, Protecting Stateless Persons from Arbitrary Detention: An Agenda for Change, 2017, available at: https://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www.statelessness.eu/files/attachments/resources/ENS_LockeInLimbo_Det ention_Agenda_online.pdf 18 European Network on Statelessness, Protecting Stateless Persons from Arbitrary Detention: A regional toolkit for practitioners, 2017, available at: https://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www.statelessness.eu/files/ENS_Detention_Toolkit.pdf 19 For more information, please visit the Statelessness Index on Belgium: http://index.statelessness.eu/country/belgium. 20 Article 1, 12° of the Immigration Law; NANSEN, ‘Vulnérabilités en détention. Motivation des titres de détention’, November 2020, available at: https://nansen-refugee.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2.Vulne%CC%81rabilite%CC%81s-en-de%CC%81tention-II.-Motivation-des-titres-dede%CC%81tentiondef_clean.pdf 14 4