Introduction Those of us who are citizens of a country usually take for granted the rights and obligations that citizenship confers on us. Most of us can enrol our children in schools, seek medical attention when we are sick, apply for employment when we need to, and vote to elect our representatives in government. We feel we have a stake in the country in which we live; we feel a profound sense of belonging to something greater than our individual selves. But what is life like for persons who have no nationality, who are stateless? Without citizenship, a person cannot register to vote in the country in which they are living, cannot apply for a travel document, cannot register to marry. In some instances, individuals who are stateless and are outside their country of origin or country of former residence can be detained for long periods if those countries refuse to grant them re‑entry to their territories. Often, even the most basic of rights – the rights to education, medical care, and employment – are denied to individuals who cannot prove the link of nationality with a country. No region of the world is free from the problems that lead to statelessness. However, the precise number of stateless persons around the world is unknown. States have sometimes been unwilling or unable to provide accurate data; few have mechanisms for registering stateless persons and stateless people are often unwilling to be identified because they lack a secure residence. Yet, an increasing number of States are working with UNHCR to measure the number of stateless persons in their territories. UNHCR estimates that millions of people around the world are living without any nationality. Statelessness, which was first recognized as a global problem during the first half of the 20th century, can result from gaps in and between the nationality laws of States, State succession, the protracted marginalization of specific groups within a society, or from stripping individuals or groups of their nationality. Statelessness is normally associated with periods of profound change in international relations. The redrawing of international borders, the manipulation of political systems by national leaders with the aim of achieving questionable political ends, and/or the denial or deprivation of nationality to exclude “Being said ‘No’ to by the country where I live; being said ‘No’ to by the country where I was born; being said ‘No’ to by the country where my parents are from; hearing ‘you do not belong to us’ continuously! I feel I am nobody and don’t even know why I’m living. Being stateless, you are always surrounded by a sense of worthlessness.” Lara, who was formerly stateless 5