Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 53 (2021) Ghosts in America: Working Towards Building a Legal Framework for Stateless Individuals in the United States 1) State succession State succession can cause statelessness. 57 State succession occurs when an existing State splits into two or more states, when part of a State secedes to form a new State, when territory is transferred from one State to another, or when two or more States unite to form a new state. 58 Statelessness happens in this context when an individual fails or is unable to secure citizenship in the successor states. 59 For example, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Federation left millions stateless throughout Eastern Europe and Asia. 60 More than 20 years later, hundreds of thousands of individuals in that region are still stateless or at risk of statelessness. 61 Expectations that the succeeding State will ensure that all individuals receive the new State’s citizenship are complicated by lingering animosity and discrimination between various populations within the original state. 62 2) Arbitrary denial or deprivation of nationality Statelessness is sometimes caused by ethnic or religious discrimination, 63 like in the case of one million Rohingya in Myanmar,64 700,000 Burkinabe in Cote d’Ivoire, 65 over 100,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent, 66 and some 300,000 Urdu-speaking Biharis.67 Statelessness is also often caused by discrimination against gender. 68 In 26 countries, including Kuwait, Lebanon, and Qatar, mothers are unable to pass their nationality to their children due to gender- 57. Id. 58. Id. 59. Id. 60. U.N. High Comm’r for Refugees (UNHCR), Mapping Statelessness in the U.K., at 23 (Nov. 2011) [hereinafter Mapping Statelessness in the U.K.]. 61. Id. 62. Citizens of Nowhere, supra note 3, at 13. 63. Lorena Rios, Stateless People in the US Have Begun to Unite for the First Time, TRT WORLD (June 29, 2018), https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/stateless-people-in-the-us-havebegun-to-unite-for-the-first-time-18541 [https://perma.cc/A4PW-P54D]. 64. Id. 65. Id. 66. Id. 67. Id. 68. Citizens of Nowhere., supra note 3, at 14. 365