II. Access to residency and related rights for recognised stateless persons “ When you separate statelessness from a person, you are separating them from the rights they have and how they should be treated” (Lynn Al-Khatib) 18. Stateless activists illustrated how the lack of a durable solution (i.e., access to naturalisation) can impact on stateless people emotionally due to the uncertainty caused by their legal status and how this impacted on them as children and young people with ties to a country, but who are in limbo given the status of their parents or the absence of regularisation procedures They underlined, the importance access to family reunification. This is often problematic and attention to that issue is needed. 19. Access to residency for stateless persons can be seen as part of the contemporary understanding of a protection regime for stateless persons. Being authorised to be present in the country is often the first step and an important pre-requisite to accessing nationality, legal rights and essential services, including those set out by the 1954 Convention. 20. Most states having a stateless determination procedure attach automatic residence rights to the recognition of an individual as stateless. However, in a handful of European countries this is not the case, and many more states do not have a mechanism through which to guarantee 1954 Convention rights to stateless persons. 21. Participants stressed the barriers encountered by stateless migrants/refugees to naturalisation and how Article 32 of the 1954 Convention (prescribing facilitation of naturalisation of stateless persons) can best be implemented in practice (e.g., reduction in residence requirements, exemptions from documentation or language testing requirements, exemption from ‘good character’/criminal conviction requirements etc.). It was observed that in some countries even recognised stateless persons have to prove their identity with documents in order to get access to naturalisation. In some other states, stateless persons have to pay excessively high fees for their naturalisation. A number of countries allow for a reduction of the required years of residence but count only the years of residence after the recognition of statelessness (and sometimes only after the acquisition of a permanent residence permit, which can take a number of years). In this respect, concerns were expressed during the discussion that many stateless persons are unable to regularise their stay and acquire a right to reside precisely because of their statelessness. Experts called on member states not to require stateless persons to already have a residence permit before applying for statelessness status. 22. It was noted that information about nationality laws of other states is not easily accessible and that a thorough examination to determine statelessness might need to not just examine today’s nationality laws, but also historic laws. Likewise, information is needed on how nationality laws and access to nationality is implemented by states in practice, and access to expert knowledge and legal aid are important in this context. 11