1.2 Executive summary Finland is party to most of the international and regional treaties relevant to the prevention and reduction of statelessness and the protection of stateless persons, and has incorporated them into national law. The right to a nationality has been recognized and the principle of avoiding statelessness has been enshrined in the Constitution of Finland. Furthermore, the Nationality Act of Finland contains several provisions aiming at preventing and reducing statelessness. It also contains a definition of a stateless person and provides for a procedure for determining a person’s citizenship status. Despite the quite comprehensive legal framework, the issue of statelessness has in practice received relatively little attention in Finland. Statelessness is rarely recognized and approached as a challenge on its own and stateless persons are not necessarily seen as persons who may face particular challenges and may therefore require specific attention. Most often, stateless persons are encountered by the authorities in the asylum and other immigration procedures where they are treated similarly to other foreigners, without any particular consideration being made with regard to their status as stateless persons. The view of the authorities generally is that statelessness is not a major issue in Finland and that the legislation and practice provide enough safeguards for the prevention and reduction of statelessness and protection of stateless persons. NGOs which otherwise deal with questions related to the rights of immigrants in Finland are also not well aware of the specific challenges stateless persons may face. Statistical information available regarding the stateless population in Finland is limited. Whereas the number of persons registered as stateless in the different registration systems is available, information on their backgrounds and profiles which would help to better understand who the stateless persons in Finland are, is lacking. Moreover, even in terms of mere numbers of stateless persons, the information is unavailable with regard to other immigration procedures than the asylum procedure. Furthermore, according to the statistics there is a relatively large number of persons residing and registered in Finland as having an unknown nationality; in fact this population is bigger than those registered as stateless. This seems to be a challenge which, to a certain extent, relates to insufficient efforts to determine a person’s nationality and also partly to a high burden and standard of proof in establishing statelessness. This category is therefore likely to include persons who in fact are stateless. Finland has a determination of citizenship status procedure, in which also statelessness can be determined. The procedure, however, has some weaknesses that limit effective and consistent identification of stateless persons. There is also a lack of awareness and understanding of the determination of citizenship status procedure among various actors, apart from the authorities who regularly deal with this procedure (mainly the Local Register Offices and the Finnish Immigration Service, Migri), which means that monitoring of the procedure and identifying possible challenges by other actors remains limited. 1.3 Statelessness across the globe Statelessness is a global phenomenon. UNHCR estimates that there are at least 10 million stateless persons worldwide. The following sections look at the definition of a “stateless person”, at the causes of statelessness and at what the consequences of being stateless may be. 8 MAPPING STATELESSNESS IN FINL AND