© R . VENTURI / DEU / 199 2 S P E C I A L R E P O RT / I N T R O D U C T I O N For this stateless couple, happiness is identity papers. It is “a form of punishment more primitive than torture.” – EARL WARREN IN 1958 , LATE U . S . SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE A 10-year Campaign To End Statelessness COVER S A young Roma girl in Croatia already knows the difficulties of being stateless. Her family barely survive by collecting scrap metal. They live in terrible conditions in a makeshift room, with no running water, electricity or sanitation. © UNHCR / N. LUKIN / NOVEMBER 2010 BACK COVER: © BERNISCHES HISTORISCHES MUSEUM, BERNE 2 S T A T E L E S S P E O P L E A R E F O U N D I N A L L P A R T S O F T H E G L O B E — Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas—entire communities, new-born babies, children, couples and older people. Their one common curse, the lack of any nationality, deprives them of rights that the majority of the global population takes for granted. Often they are excluded from cradle to grave—being denied a legal identity when they are born, access to education, health care, marriage and job opportunities during their lifetime and even the dignity of an official burial and a death certificate when they die. Statelessness is a man-made problem and occurs because of a bewildering array of causes. Entire swathes of a population may become stateless overnight due STAT E L E S S N E S S to political or legal directives or the redrawing of state boundaries. Families endure generations of statelessness despite having deep-rooted and longstanding ties to their communities and countries. Some have become stateless due to administrative obstacles; they simply fall through the cracks of a system that ignores or has forgotten them. More than two decades after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, over 600,000 people remain stateless. Some 300,000 Urdu-speaking Biharis were denied citizenship by the government of Bangladesh when the country gained its independence in 1971. A 2013 Constitutional Court ruling in the Dominican Republic led to tens of thousands of Dominicans, the vast majority of Haitian descent, being deprived of their nationality, and of the rights that flowed from it. More than 800,000 STAT E L E S S N E S S “It is wholly within the power of every concerned government to resolve statelessness. We have the opportunity, as never before to tackle the injustice. Now is the time to act.” – ANTÓNIO GUTERRES HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES Over three million stateless people live in just 10 countries. 3