HOW to end statelessness in Europe? THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION TO STATELESSNESS IS THE GRANT OF NATIONALITY. Until this is achieved, it is important that stateless people enjoy their basic human rights, allowing them to live a life in dignity. States also need to make sure not to create new cases of statelessness. Acquisition of a nationality 10 THIS IS THAI HA. She has lived in the Netherlands since she was a child and she considers the country to be her home. To naturalize, she needs to present a Vietnamese passport. Despite her Vietnamese parentage, the Vietnamese Embassy has refused to issue one as they do not consider her a national, because she was not born in Vietnam. In the Netherlands, stateless persons do not have to present a passport in order to naturalize, but Thai Ha has not been recognized as a stateless person because there is no procedure in place to determine statelessness. Until Thai Ha is recognized as stateless she cannot naturalize and remains in limbo. To learn more about Thai Ha please see https://youtu.be/o9EhPr3ETXw. © UNHCR / Tilburg University THIS IS NINA. She lives in Russia. She became stateless after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. She is holding her Russian Federation passport which she obtained after naturalizing with the help of a legal aid organization. The dissolution of the Soviet Union left millions of people stateless across the region. Some of the former Soviet Republics amended their citizenship laws to facilitate the acquisition of citizenship while others conducted specific campaigns to reach out to stateless persons or persons at risk of statelessness. The Russian Federation adopted its new law on citizenship in 2002 and amended it on multiple occasions throughout the years, including the latest amendments in 2016. Between 2003 and 2016, some 680,000 stateless former Soviet citizens acquired Russian citizenship. © A.Kostenkova / Faith, Hope and Love STATELESSNESS IN EUROPE