Not knowing family relations origins can limit the child’s enjoyment of their family’s “ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic background”3 as well impact physical health. 5. Not having such essential elements of one’s identity can have lifelong and inter-generational adverse consequences including on the child’s mental health. Whenever a child is missing identity elements, States have an obligation to speedily re-establish them. A State’s failure to preserve a child’s identity and restore missing elements is a source of frustration affecting mental health.4 Impact of having a legal identity on mental health 6. A child’s legal existence is first acknowledged through birth registration. A birth certificate provides proof of age. UNICEF notes that “in some places, children who are unable to prove their age are at greater risk of being forced into child marriage, child labour or recruitment by armed forces. They may become vulnerable to trafficking and illegal adoption. (…). In young adulthood, official identification is required for basic but critical transactions, like opening a bank account, registering to vote, receiving a passport, entering the job market, and buying or inheriting property. Economic opportunities are severely limited for those without a birth certificate – raising their risk of falling into, or remaining trapped in, poverty.”5 7. Having a legal identity is an essential child protection measure, intrinsically promoting mental health and psychosocial wellbeing as it can safeguard from such risks and enables them to participate in society. Impact of having a nationality on mental health 8. Developmental work by the European Network on Statelessness “It is especially important that stateless persons with its members has suggested that “experiences of and communities understand this big picture to intergenerational discrimination, marginalisation, and injustice, make sure that nothing that is important to people with lived experience is missed. For effective prolonged insecure residence and nationality status, feelings of results, you cannot work on statelessness from a being misunderstood, ignored or not belonging, complex migration legal perspective alone. Statelessness is also a journeys, and separation from family and community, are just some mental health issue, it is a social issue, and of the factors that can lead to or exacerbate mental and physical everything needs to be considered in relation to 6 one another to create a successful response.” health challenges for stateless people.” 9. Similar findings on adverse impacts on mental health have been Aleksandra Semeriak Gavrilenok (2023) Interview found among particular groups of stateless people and in other with ENS regions such as Kuwaiti Bidoon refugees living in the UK,7 people left stateless due to gender discriminatory citizenship laws in Malaysia,8 Rohingya refugees,9 ethnic minorities in Thailand,10 and people impacted by statelessness in South Africa.11 3 Art.20(3) CRC IDRWG (2024) Submission to the CRC Committee on upcoming General Comment 27 on access to justice and effective remedies https://www.child-identity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/IDRWG_Submission_Access-to-justice-6-August-2024-EN.pdf 5 UNICEF (nd) Birth registration Without legal proof of identity, millions of children born today do not 'officially' exist. https://www.unicef.org/protection/birth-registration 6 European Network on Statelessness (2024) Briefing: Statelessness and mental health: What we know and what we don’t (unpublished available on request) 7 Zard, S. (2024). Statelessness and Mental Health Experiences among Kuwaiti Bidoon People Living in the UK: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. UCL (University College London). 8 Family Frontiers https://familyfrontiers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/The-Lived-Experiences-of-Malaysian-Women-and-their-ChildrenBorn-Outside-Malaysia-due-to-Malaysia_s-Unequal-Citizenship-Laws.pdf 9 Milton, A., Rahman, M., Hussain, S., Jindal, C., Choudhury, S., Akter, S., Ferdousi, S., Mouly, T., Hall, J., & Efird, J. (2017). Trapped in Statelessness: Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14(8), Article 942. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14080942 and Riley, A., Varner, A., Ventevogel, P., Taimur Hasan, M. M., & Welton-Mitchell, C. (2017). Daily stressors, trauma exposure, and mental health among stateless Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Transcultural Psychiatry, 54(3), 304–331. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461517705571 10 Herberholz, C. (2022). ‘We are inferior, we have no rights’: Statelessness and mental health among ethnic minorities in Northern Thailand. SSM - Population Health, 19, Article 101138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2022.101138 11 WarriaI, A. and ChikadziII, V. (2022) Statelessness, Trauma and Mental Well-being: Implication for Practice, Research and Advocacy, AHMR vol.8 n.3 Cape Town Sep./Dec. 2022 https://scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2410-79722022000300002 4 2