The following year, 2011, Danish media reported on the wrongful refusals. The attention ultimately resulted in the resignation of the Minister for Integration, and in the establishment of a Statelessness Commission.42 Before the Minister resigned, she asked the Central Office of Civil Registration for information about the number of persons born stateless in Denmark who could have claimed Danish nationality under the 1961 Convention or the CRC from 199143 onwards. Based on information from the Central Office of Civil Registration, she concluded that 378 persons (aged 0 – 37 years) were registered as born stateless in Denmark and thus potentially had the right to Danish nationality. Among them, 27 could not any longer apply for Danish nationality by entitlement as they had turned 21.44 Given that these stateless persons might have been misinformed about their rights, the Minister instigated that they were informed individually in March 2011 of their assumed entitlement to Danish nationality. Simultaneously, the 27 stateless persons who did not any longer fulfill the general age requirements for applying for Danish nationality were given an opportunity to apply for inclusion in a naturalization bill by 1 March 2012.45 What came to be known as the “statelessness case” prompted public debate, and questions of statelessness and the rights of stateless persons captured the attention of the Danish public. More families claimed that they were stateless and asked for nationality rights for their children. It turned out that almost all the stateless persons who had been wrongly denied Danish nationality in the “statelessness case” were stateless Palestinians, whereas many stateless persons born in other countries, especially stateless Kurds from Syria, had been wrongly registered in the Aliens Register and the Civil Registration System as nationals of the countries of their former habitual residence, rather than as stateless.46 When a picture of a defective registration system emerged in or around August 2011, DIHR entered into negotiations with the Danish Immigration Service with a view to improve the registration procedures and to correct earlier wrongful registrations.47 Accordingly, the Danish Immigration Service introduced new registration procedures, as explained in more detail below in Section 3.3.2.4, and many stateless persons have had their civil registration changed. 2.2 A statistical overview of the stateless population in Denmark 2.2.1 Specifics of the data used The gathering of statistics on stateless persons in Denmark presents a challenge, also found in the vast majority of other countries: no one single administrative office in Denmark is able to provide statistics relating to all stateless persons in the country. Instead, different sources provide statistics on different groups of stateless persons. Moreover, as noted above, a person’s statelessness was not necessarily registered correctly in the Danish registers prior to 2011. 42 Website of the Commission available at: http://statsloesekommissionen.dk/. 43 The year 1991 was chosen since that year the CRC entered into force in Denmark. But see discussion, infra, of Article 12 of the 1961 Convention (requiring that Articles 1 and 4 be retroactive upon a State Party’s accession). 44 See Ministry of Integration, ‘Redegørelse til statsministeren om Integrationsministeriets behandling af ansøgninger om indfødsret fra statsløse personer født i Danmark’, 7 March 2011, p. 29, available at: https://bit.ly/2CSrt43. 45 In a letter of 3 March 2011, 378 stateless persons, born in Denmark since the CRC entered into force in 1991, were informed that the 1961 Convention and the CRC, under certain conditions, entitle persons born stateless in Denmark to Danish nationality. The letter listed the conditions they had to meet under Danish law. It also informed of the application form and fee. 46 See one of the first newspaper articles on the registration problem, ‘Kurdere vil omregistreres fra syrere til statsløse’ in Information, 27 June 2011, available at: http://www.information.dk/271997. 47 See the DIHR’s memoranda of 4 October 2011 and 27 October 2011 on correct registration of among other things statelessness, available at: https://bit.ly/3hISd67 and https://bit.ly/3hDJDVX. UNHCR Representation for the Nordic and Baltic Countries 15