They were not the first target of exclusionary citizenship laws, but because of their previous exclusion and forced migration they became one of the most affected populations.
Due to their marginalized position many have difficulties in regaining their citizenship to
the present day. In many instances, the problem has become intergenerational. As one
of the representatives of a human rights NGO in the region commented during his interview with me, in many cases the grandparents need to be registered first in order to register a child.
For a long time, the position of Roma with difficulties in accessing citizenship
were out of the international spotlight and they were not recognized as “real stateless”
people. It was again highlighted by a #RomaBelong project of the European Roma
“For a long time, the position of Roma with difficulties in accessing citizenship were out of the international spotlight and
they were not recognized as ‘real stateless’ people”
Rights Centre, the European Network on Statelessness and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, in partnership with local human rights NGOs such as Tirana Legal
Aid Society, Your Rights in BIH, the Centre for Legal Aid and Regional Development in
Kosovo, the Macedonian Young Lawyers Association, Young Roma from Montenegro
and Praxis from Serbia (ERRC 2017). With the advocacy and efforts of these NGOs,
the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recognized the applicant as a stateless
person (Kochovski 2017) in the case Hasani vs. the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Application no. 4558/17).
Roma are also faced with statelessness in countries like Italy. As a report by
Daniella Maccioni (2013) showed, they face statelessness because of spill-over effects
due to the Yugoslav wars. Many Roma ended up as forced migrants in Italy. Romani
children who were born in Italy to undocumented parents have difficulties naturalizing as
Italian citizens due to particular legal obstacles in the Italian law because of living in informal settlements and hence not having legally registered residence. There are also
places like Romania, Bulgaria and Albania (ERRC 2018), where Roma have difficulties
accessing citizenship and their situation is not primarily connected to war or state disintegration at all. Instead, it is due to marginalization wherein many children who are not
born in hospitals do not receive birth certificates in time to be registered as citizens of
their own countries.
Conclusion
Stateless Roma live in different European countries and become stateless due to the
specific contexts of these countries. As in the case of Baltic non-citizens, Roma have
not migrated to Europe in the last couple of decades but are a traditional minority in Europe. However, their stateless position is not as well recorded as the position of Baltic
http://community.apsanet.org/migrationcitizenship/home
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