MAPPING OF THE POPULATION AT RISK OF STATELESSNESS IN ALBANIA As seen supra in this report, Article 3(2) of the Albanian Law “On Foreigners” enshrines a definition of a stateless person - “stateless person means a person who is not a citizen of any state” -, which nevertheless falls short of international standards. Furthermore, it does not have specific and formal procedures to establish statelessness. Yet, identifying stateless persons and granting them basic rights allows them to fully participate in and contribute to the society in which they live. It also reduces costs and security risks related to the marginalization of stateless persons.53 In order to ensure fairness and efficiency, UNHCR recommends that statelessness determination procedures ensure guarantees, including the right to an effective remedy in case of rejected application. Legal aid should be available and administrative fees for statelessness applications should be lowered. Lastly, deportation of individuals who have an application pending in a statelessness determination procedure should be suspended until the authorities’ final decision.54 Furthermore, a stateless person may still fail to benefit from facilitated naturalization because of this absence of a statelessness determination procedure. Indeed, the fact that statelessness determination procedure is missing, hinders the implementation of the legal provisions. Thus, although the Albanian law provides children of stateless persons with the right to acquire the nationality of the country they were born in, they may be deprived of this right because their parents do not have the possibility to prove their status as stateless persons. On this point, Albania could take example from neighbouring Kosovo’s legislation55 amended in 2013, and by-law adopted in 2015, and notably by the administrative instruction for statelessness determination procedure and criteria. 6.1.1.2. Absence of non-contentious procedures to remedy untimely birth registration In Albania, obstacles to the registration of a child’s birth include: a certain rigidity or inflexibility of the public officials, limited cooperation and knowledge of the registry civil servants, limited autonomy of civil servants to solve cases, lack of information and training of civil registry personnel, giving birth at home or a lack of cooperation by local authorities and administrations. To remedy untimely birth registration issues, some neighbour countries improved their legislations, especially by introducing procedures for determination of date and place of birth for persons. Europe’, 2007 53 UNHCR report ‘Statelessness determination procedures - Identifying and protecting stateless persons’, August 2014, p3, available at: www. refworld.org/docid/5412a7be4.html 54 See UNHCR Expert Meeting Summary conclusions ‘Statelessness Determination Procedures and the Status of Stateless Persons’, December 2010, p4, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/4d9022762.html 55 https://www.kuvendikosoves.org/common/docs/ligjet/Law%20on%20Citizenship%20of%20Kosovo.pdf 56 UNHCR - TLAS / May 2018