Case: Two sisters born in Ethiopia of mixed ethnic origin Genet and Tirhas are sisters. They were born in 1989 and 1990 in Ethiopia, to an ethnic Eritrean father and an Oromo mother. Under the Ethiopian law in force at the time, children followed the nationality of their father. Their father died soon after the birth of the youngest sister. During the Ethiopian-Eritrean war in 1998-2000, Ethiopia stripped many ethnic Eritreans of their Ethiopian citizenship. Around 2002, the mother and the two girls fled to Kenya. There the mother died and someone arranged for the girls to go to the Netherlands. An asylum application was unsuccessful. The girls could not be deported, because – even though they speak Amharic, the daily language of Ethiopia, Ethiopia does not consider them as nationals. The sisters have no Ethiopian documents showing their Ethiopian origin. Many letters sent in recent years to institutions and individuals in Ethiopia in an effort to obtain such documents did not produce results. At the moment they are illegally in the Netherlands. They cannot work or study. A local NGO takes care of them. Case: Rejected asylum-seeker from Guinea Cheikh originates from Guinea. After he had been arrested during an anti-government demonstration, he managed to flee the country as a stowaway on a ship. He had no documents whatsoever with him to show his links to Guinea. This happened in 1999. The ship sailed to Rotterdam. Cheikh applied for asylum, which was denied. Since 2006, numerous attempts to obtain a travel document from the Guinean embassy, in order to return him to Guinea, remained without results. Without documents showing Guinean origin, he was told, the embassy could not do anything. Efforts to obtain documents directly in Guinea were without success. Cheikh was told that people, who remained outside the country for prolonged periods, were removed from all civil registries. Cheikh is now living illegally in the Netherlands. He has medical problems and needs regular checkups and medication. He is afraid that due to his precarious status and lack of documents, which mean that he is only entitled to medical support if his medical situation is acute and urgent, he may not have timely access to medical assistance, if and when necessary. 14 Mapping statelessness