S P E C I A L R E P O RT / C H I L D R E N “...a form of punishment more primitive than torture” A 1 0 -Y E A R C A M PA I G N T O E N D S TAT E L E S S N E S S  Removing gender discrimination in nationality laws;  Granting protection status to stateless migrants; and  Issuing nationality identification documentation to those with entitlements to it. In prioritizing the eradication of statelessness, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said: “It is tragic that today millions of people are living without nationality. Unlike many armed conflicts, it is wholly within the power of every concerned government to resolve statelessness. We have the opportunity, as never before, to tackle this injustice. Now is the time to act. I reiterate to governments that UNHCR is committed to supporting your efforts to end statelessness.” “We are working for the well-being of our community out of love because we ourselves were marginalized,” Tassoumane says. Building on this momentum, UNHCR is launching its Campaign to End Statelessness within 10 years. UNHCR’s strategy to achieve the ambitious goal of this campaign sets out key actions that states must take to address statelessness. These actions include:  Resolving major situations of statelessness through law and policy reforms, accompanied by citizenship campaigns;  Ensuring that no child is born stateless;  Preventing deprivation of nationality on the basis of discrimination; © UNHCR / D. BOSHOFF / NOVEM BER 2 012 Children: Millions of ‘Invisible’ Kids Maria, a stateless girl born to Cuban parents who emigrated, cannot acquire Cuban citizenship. “Sometimes as a mother I try to understand. The minute my child was born, she was brought into this nightmare that is being a ‘stateless person’. How is it possible a child can be born and at the same time, the most basic right that any human being is entitled to is denied to her?” O A stateless child is born every 10 minutes in just five countries. These five countries account for more than half of the world’s known stateless population and do not provide legal safeguards to prevent children from becoming stateless. 8 O V E R A T H I R D O F T H E W O R L D ’ S S TAT E L E S S P E O P L E A R E C H I L D R E N . Many fall into a legal quicksand the day they are born, spend most of their lives battling the inequalities they inherited, and often pass on their heartbreak on to future generations. It may not even be possible to register the birth of a stateless child, making that infant an instant ‘non-person’ in the eyes of governments. He or she is subject to potential abuse and rejection ranging from lack of access to life-saving immunizations to protection from early marriage. After being required to present his grandfather’s death certificate to confirm his nationality, Hussain, a young Kenyan asks, “Can you imagine someone asking you for something you don’t have? Asking you to give some proof when you don’t really know how to prove it. When my grandfather died I wasn’t even born.” The risk of unregistered children being left stateless increases when conflict forces them to flee their homes or when they are born in exile. Over 50,000 children have been born to Syrian refugee parents in Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt since onset of the conflict. Most are entitled to the nationality of Syria but those who remain without civil birth registration may face serious problems proving this later in life. But registration is not always an easy procedure for refugees. Due to the con- STAT E L E S S N E S S – MOTHER OF MARIA STAT E L E S S N E S S 9