Statelessness as a Product of Slippery Statecraft
and awareness; training and capacity building. 104 Given the framing of
statelessness as a human rights issue, the ISI is making use of various human rights
tools to redress it, including the Universal Periodic Review and review processes
by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the
Committee on the Rights of the Child (‘CRC’). 105
Linking up with global attention to child statelessness, ISI dedicated its second
flagship report to the issue. 106 At the time of writing, they had prepared 12
different country submissions to the CRC and launched an online toolkit for civil
society organisations on using the CRC to address the right to a nationality. 107 The
ISI also collaborates with a campaign by the ENS, entitled ‘None of Europe's
Children Should Be Stateless’. 108 The ISI sees the focus on child rights as strategic
because the CRC is the most widely ratified international human rights treaty, and
also because the right to nationality is an ‘enabling right’ that impacts children’s
enjoyment of all the other rights. 109
While emphasis continues to be on international human rights law and
statelessness as a violation of human rights, 110 ISI also recognises the structural
limitations of the human rights framework to addressing statelessness. 111 In their
two flagship reports on the world’s stateless, 112 working paper series, training
courses and online toolkits, they make connections between statelessness and
other international concerns, such as democracy, peace and security and
development. 113 Toward this end, the ISI is involved in global discussions around
promoting a human rights-based approach to sustainable development, which is
inclusive of the stateless. 114
DEPOLITICISING STATELESSNESS TO INTEGRATE IT IN GLOBAL
GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORKS
As statelessness has been rediscovered as a phenomenon, global governance actors
have been hard at work integrating the issue into emerging governance
frameworks. The SDA, 115 New York Declaration, 116 the Global Compact on
104 Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, ‘What We Do’ <http://www.institutesi.org/what-we-
do>.
105 ‘Statelessness and Human Rights’ (n 101).
106 Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion, The World’s Stateless Children ( Wolf Legal 2017).
107 Institute
of
Statelessness
and
Inclusion,
‘About
the
CRC’
<http://www.statelessnessandhumanrights.org/crc/about-the-crc> (‘About the CRC’).
108 European Network on Statelessness, ‘#StatelessKids — None of Europe’s Children Should
Be Stateless’ <https://www.statelessness.eu/statelesskids-no-child-should-be-stateless>.
109 ‘About the CRC’ (n 107).
110 For their dedicated website on the issue, see Statelessness and Human Rights, ‘Welcome’
<http://www.statelessnessandhumanrights.org/>.
111 Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion, World’s Stateless (n 7).
112 ibid; Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion, Stateless Children (n 106).
113 See
e,g,
Institute
of
Statelessness
and
Inclusion,
‘Resources’
<http://www.institutesi.org/resources>.
114 Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, Statelessness, Human Rights and the Sustainable
Development Agenda (Working Paper, February 2017).
115 United
Nations,
‘The
Sustainable
Development
Agenda’
<https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/> accessed 27 May 2019.
116 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, GA Res 71/1, UN Doc A/RES/71/1 (3
October 2016) (‘New York Declaration’).
149