Litigation Toolkit on Statelessness: Volume I October 2022 INTRODUCTION To be stateless is to have no nationality, and for the millions of stateless people around the world, this can mean denial of basic rights most people take for granted. Stateless people often do not have access to basic and fundamental rights, including the right to access education, health care, employment, and other social rights such as the right to marry or register the birth of their children, to legally ‘exist’. Statelessness affects both recent migrants and those who have lived in the same place for generations. It can be intertwined with other root causes of displacement, such as the persecution of minority groups and armed conflict, or occur as a result of conflicts of laws between States, discrimination and gaps in nationality laws, or even deliberate policies by States to strip people of nationality. Many in Europe are also stateless in situ, or “in their own country”, 1 often in situations linked to State succession and discriminatory laws or practices against certain communities trapped in intergenerational statelessness.2 Stateless person Person at risk of statelessness A person ‘who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’.1 This definition is set out in the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, is part of customary international law and has been authoritatively interpreted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as requiring ‘a mixed question of fact and law’. A person who is not stateless but is at risk of becoming so, a person whose statelessness has not yet been determined but there are indications that they may be stateless, or a person whose statelessness may become evident over time. Hidden statelessness can come to light in an immigration detention context, as well as at different stages in migration or international protection procedures. Stateless people often lack access to fundamental civil, political, economic, cultural, and social rights, and statelessness also increases the risk of experiencing poverty, marginalisation, exploitation, and arbitrary immigration detention. Statelessness pushes people to the margins of society and puts them at risk of discrimination and human rights abuses. It is essential that European governments and institutions recognise and address this issue by protecting everyone’s fundamental right to a nationality. Statelessness is a legal anomaly that affects over half a million people in Europe, but it is solvable. A key component of the work to end statelessness is litigating for change, both in domestic and international (or supranational) courts and bodies, with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 12(4). A person’s “own country” is a country they have a significant attachment to, which is often the country where they were born and have always lived, and do not have significant ties to other countries. See also UNHCR (2014), Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons Under the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, para. 164: https://bit.ly/3uY4VHg. 2 European Network on Statelessness, Statelessness determination and protection in Europe: good practice, challenges, and risks (2021): https://index.statelessness.eu/sites/default/files/ENSStatelessness_determination_and_protection_in_Europe-Sep_2021_0.pdf. 1 2