Responses to Statelessness
Community legal assistance projects, such as those supported by OSF and Namati in Kenya,
and Bangladesh, appear to be an effective way to achieve real progress in assisting stateless
individuals through empowering stateless communities to take action to alleviate their own
situation and those of their communities. Support to and expansion of such projects should
be considered.
There are opportunities for sharing and leveraging of expertise and tools amongst
community legal assistance providers at a regional and global level which could be facilitated
by funders such as UNHCR and OSF.
Statelessness determination procedures should not be an end in themselves. Their
establishment should be accompanied by an efficient, facilitated pathway to regularization
of legal status and naturalisation, thereby increasing protection and leading to a reduction in
statelessness.
More comprehensive identification of the size and situation of stateless populations is
necessary to bolster advocacy efforts to find solutions. A more unified approach to
measurement standards and methodologies to undertake mapping studies is required.
Law reform initiatives must also be carried through to the implementation stage. This will
require advocacy and support to ensure that human resources, administrative structures
and political will are developed to effect real change.
Stronger engagement of the EU on statelessness within the EU and in its foreign policy needs
to be developed.
The challenge of presenting the human stories behind statelessness must be addressed.
There is a need to increase the level of engagement of UNHCR offices with stateless
communities and individuals, and to ensure that their stories are disseminated in a manner
that assists and empowers them.
The analysis of nationality laws remains key to understanding the causes of statelessness,
however it was also recognized that it is crucial to obtain accurate data on how nationality
laws are applied in practice if a full picture is to emerge.