It is not clear what happens if a stateless person has failed to secure a travel
document on humanitarian or accessibility grounds, or if their documents are
rejected as insufficient to prove their identity by the Ministry of Immigration,
Integration and Housing (the authority responsible for processing naturalisation
claims). While it has been noted that the Ministry of Immigration, Integration
and Housing draws on identity information from the Aliens Register (which is
administered by the DIS), the information registered in this database is not
necessarily accurate given the lack of law and policy on statelessness
determination (Ersbøll, 2013, p. 10). The fact that individuals can apply to
have their nationality re-assessed, and considering that in 2012 the DIS
acknowledged that 4,000 individuals from only three states may have had their
nationality incorrectly registered, highlights the problem with relying on this
information (CHP Post Online, 2012).
The Temporary Asylum Law in 2015
In February 2015, a new Temporary Protection Status (§ 7,3) was adopted in
Denmark, which was designed to accommodate Syrian refugees who had not
directly faced a threat of individual persecution, but fled because of the general
situation in their country of origin (Refugees DK, 2016a). Syrian refugees are
particularly vulnerable to statelessness given the large stateless population in the
country before the conflict, the difficulty they face in registering the birth of
their children in the neighbouring states and the gender discrimination in the
Syrian nationality law (ISI and NRC, 2016).
The new Temporary Protection Status § 7,3 provides less rights and a shorter
time period of the right of residence than is granted under § 7,1 for ‘convention
refugees’, or § 7,2 to those who are eligible for ‘individual protection status’
under the Aliens Act (Government of Denmark, 2013). As Refugees DK
(2016a) summarise:
If granted this status (§ 7,3,) the asylum seeker obtains a 1 year residence permit and the
asylum seeker does not have the right to apply for family reunification until it has been
renewed and 3 years in total have passed. When the 1-year period expires, the case will be
re-considered. If the asylum seeker is still in need of protection, the residence permit will be
renewed for a 2-years period. [Emphasis added].
This will impact a significant number of stateless refugees, as 28% of all asylum
claims in 2016 received this status (ibid). However, the withdrawal of this
protection status is worrying as Article 1C of the 1951 Convention is more
specific in its criteria for cessation of stateless refugees’ status, with the need for
protection to be considered along with their ability to return to their country of
previous habitual residence.
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