Identifying the Stateless in the United Kingdom • 469 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 Equal Rights Trust (n 107) 266–67. Bianchini (n 8); Foster and Lambert (n 129) 77–79, 81. David Weissbrodt and Michael Divine, ‘Unequal Access to Human Rights: The Categories of Noncitizenship’ (2016) 19 Citizenship Studies 870, 873; Equal Rights Trust (n 107) xxv, 5. Release may be affected by the non-cooperation of the country of origin, for instance by refusing to identify or readmit a person; Equal Rights Trust (n 107) 138; Gyulai 2014 (n 6) 116, 139. Gyulai 2014 (n 6) 116, 139, 381. Makhlouf (n 176); Solicitor 1 (n 120); Interview with Clara della Croce, Associate Lecturer, Oxford Brookes University (Oxford, 4 March 2016). Stateless Person 5 (n 110); Stateless Person 9 (n 161). Stateless Person 1 (n 117); Stateless Person 5 (n 110); Stateless Person 7 (n 110); Stateless Person 8 (n 110). Solicitor 2 (n 119). Equal Rights Trust (n 107) xxv; Equal Rights Trust, Guidelines to Protect Stateless Persons from Arbitrary Detention (2012) 11. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ijrl/article/32/3/440/6065591 by guest on 04 July 2025 statelessness can remain unidentified, or become apparent only at a later stage, after the initial decision to detain has been made. As earlier studies have shown, stateless persons are not protected if the nexus between the identification of statelessness and the right to liberty and security of the person is not recognized.190 The risk of lengthy detention is greater when the authorities engage in futile efforts to obtain proof of nationality and travel documents to carry out the removal of stateless persons.191 In these circumstances, the failure to recognize the specific challenges related to statelessness, including the unavailability of consular protection (no State is empowered to intervene on behalf of an individual lacking a nationality),192 often results in undue penalization of the individual.193 According to lawyers and advocates, particularly problematic is the HO’s perception of non-cooperation by the individual during the process of removal when there is a lack of documentation, 194 and when attempts to establish a person’s nationality with the help of the embassies are unsuccessful.195 Against this backdrop, the research participants were detained for considerable periods while the HO tried to obtain documents, even after their claimed country of origin had either denied or refused to confirm that they were nationals and refused to admit them. Two persons eventually spent more time in immigration detention than in criminal detention (one was detained under immigration powers for more than four years after completing a sentence of one year for having worked with a false identity; the other was detained under immigration powers for more than two years after having served two years in gaol for cannabis smuggling).196 It is significant that following applications for judicial review, four of the research participants eventually obtained damages for unlawful immigration detention due to its unreasonable length.197 Therefore, it is possible to conclude that detention and determination of statelessness are not sufficiently coordinated or integrated with one another,198 and fail to respond to the legal needs. For according to the principles of necessity and proportionality required to authorize immigration detention, stateless persons should not be detained pending their removal, as removal is impossible; at most, they could be required to comply with non-custodial measures.199