Chapter 6 IRAQ . Ghania (left) and her daughter, Iman, are Bidoon and recently acquired Iraqi nationality. As citizens they are now able to move around freely without fear of being caught without papers, access medical treatment and register their children for school. Southern Iraq is home to around 160,000 members of the Bidoon community, who arrived in large numbers from Kuwait following the 1991 Gulf War. © UNHCR/HOUSSAM HARIRI Stateless persons often have limited recourse to basic rights and are not able to access a range of services such as education and medical care. They may not be able to legally work, own property, or travel domestically and overseas. A socio-economic study in Kenya conducted jointly by UNHCR and the World Bank in 2019 showed that the incidence of poverty is significantly higher among the Shona stateless community when compared to the Kenyan national average. In addition, the study showed significant differences in educational enrolment between stateless and Kenyan children: the gross enrolment rate at secondary level for stateless children was 50 per cent compared to 78 per cent for nationals. Stateless girls were even less likely to receive secondary education, with a secondary gross enrolment rate of only 37 per cent compared to 65 per cent for stateless boys. While these results are from one study alone and further research is required and planned, the study results are notable in terms of the specific inequalities in access to education as one basic service stateless persons and stateless girls in particular face. UNHCR > GLOBAL TRENDS 2019 Some displaced people are also stateless. While UNHCR has historically not reported on multiple statuses, in 2017 it was decided that it was important to report on the displaced stateless Rohingya population as having both refugee and stateless status. Therefore, this population is included in both the displaced and statelessness counts. In addition to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh who have been reported under UNHCR’s statelessness figures since 2017, displaced Rohingya in India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are included in the number of stateless persons for the first time in 2019. This led to significant increases in statelessness figures in India (17,730 displaced stateless persons), Indonesia (580) and Malaysia. In Malaysia, the inclusion of displaced stateless persons led to an increase in the total number by almost 100,000 in 2019, consisting of Rohingya refugees and asylum-seekers displaced from Myanmar. Notwithstanding the increase in the overall reported figure, the Government of Malaysia has made significant progress in addressing the nationality situation of in situ stateless populations. In 2019 alone, 930 previous stateless persons were granted Malaysian nationality. 61