MAPPING OF THE POPULATION AT RISK OF STATELESSNESS IN ALBANIA Article 3.2 of the Albanian Law “On Foreigners” defines a stateless person as “a person who is not a citizen of any state”. This definition falls short of the international law definition of a stateless person as someone who is “not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law”. The failure to include the phrase “under the operation of its law” in the Albanian law is a significant gap in the definition. It means that those who under the letter of the law should have a nationality, but have been denied their nationality due to non-implementation (or discriminatory implementation) of the law, may not be considered to be stateless in the country. In the absence of a procedure to identify and protect stateless persons, the impact of this gap may be less obvious in practice, but it is a significant one nonetheless, as it can result in stateless people not being identified and being denied protection. Article 3 of the 2013 Law on Foreigners also foresees the possibility of issuing travel documents or residence permits on humanitarian grounds, to stateless status holders who are “determined by competent authorities” to be so. However, Albanian law does not provide a special status for stateless people, nor a statelessness identification mechanism or a status determination procedure. Due to the lack of a law on statelessness, the legal status of stateless persons is not governed by any regulation and law. Moreover, in practice, stateless persons are not issued with travel documents to allow them to leave the country. The gap in the definition identified above, together with the lack of a statelessness determination procedure, prevents stateless persons being recognised as such in Albania and enjoying the protections and rights and the possibility of being issued travel documents or of obtaining a residence permit on humanitarian grounds. Nevertheless, as will be developed under section 5, most of the persons identified through the survey are ‘at risk of statelessness’ and fulfil the requirements to be considered as Albanian citizens. Therefore, the problem often lays on the confirmation of their citizenship. For these persons ‘at risk of statelessness’, as well as for the refugees recognised as refugees but not as stateless because of the absence of stateless determination procedure, access to rights such as social services, is sometimes impossible, sometimes undermined. 36 UNHCR - TLAS / May 2018