Existing Statelessness determination procedure Elements of statelessness determination procedures Statelessness determination is a specialized field with specific procedural considerations. Key elements to include in SDPs are explained below, as are a number of good practices emerging from the experience of States undertaking formal statelessness determination. To the extent that statelessness determination presents similarities with refugee status determination, there are a number of procedural guarantees that have been developed in asylum systems that are relevant to SDPs.20 In the following section, the following elements of statelessness determination procedures will be explained: 1. The institutional location of statelessness determination procedures; 2. Access to procedures; 3. Coordinating refugee status and statelessness determinations; 4. Evidentiary considerations; 5. Procedural guarantees; 6. Rights granted to recognized stateless persons; and 7. Facilitating naturalization of stateless persons. 1. The institutional location of statelessness determination procedures Where to situate SDPs institutionally is a matter of State discretion and can vary from one country to the next. Regardless of where SDPs are located within a State’s legal or administrative framework, it is important that examiners develop expertise on statelessness determination while ensuring that the procedures are accessible to the concerned population. This requires a balance between the centralization of expertise to conduct statelessness determination within a specialized administrative or judicial unit of government and providing individuals the opportunity to lodge applications with government representatives dispersed across a country. The SDP in Spain strikes a balance in this regard, allowing individuals to submit applications through a number of governmental bodies throughout the country, but concentrating the examination and analysis of statelessness applications within a centralized body. In Brazil, an application can be submitted to any unit of the Federal Police, which will then forward it to the Ministry of State for Justice and Public Security, the centralized decision-making body. In Italy, statelessness determination can take place through an administrative procedure or a judicial procedure. In 2017, the judicial procedure was decentralized to the 26 20 Extensive guidelines on how to conduct refugee status determination are compiled in UNHCR, Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status (reissued 2019), available at: https://www.refworld.org/ docid/5cb474b27.html. 10 U N H C R > G P P AC T I O N 6 : E S TA B L I S H I N G S TAT E L E S S N E S S D E T E R M I N AT I O N P R O C E D U R E S