Netherlands to accede to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (CMW). Article 29 of the CMW stipulates that ‘each child of a migrant worker shall have the right [..] to registration and to a nationality’. Despite multiple previous UPR recommendations, the Netherlands is not a signatory to the CMW. Snapshot of Statelessness in The Netherlands 5. The Government of the Netherlands estimates that more than 36,267 people in the Netherlands do not or cannot possess a passport, which can be an indication of statelessness.6 As of 1 January 2021, an estimated 6,000 persons were registered as stateless, meaning they are not considered as a national of any State under the operation of its law, and 31,000 persons were registered as having ‘nationality unknown’.7 There are inconsistencies in how nationality and statelessness are recorded in the Dutch national statistical database (StatLine). The two categories ‘stateless’ and ‘nationality unknown’ are at times combined and at times reported upon separately.8 Fully reliable data on statelessness in the Netherlands remains absent, including due to the absence of a procedure to determine who is stateless on the territory. Without a statelessness determination procedure (SDP), statelessness cannot be adequately identified and determined, leading to many stateless people not being registered as such and remaining registered under the category of ‘nationality unknown’. 6. Further, stateless persons with the right to stay or reside in the Netherlands can ask their municipality to register them as stateless if they have the relevant documents, but municipalities implement the procedure differently and no assistance is provided at first instance to inform people how and when to ask for registration as a stateless person. Stateless people without a form of legal stay cannot register as a stateless person at their municipality. The lack of data makes it challenging to comprehend the actual scale of the issue. 7. The available data, nonetheless, shows that statelessness primarily exists in a migratory context, yet children are still born stateless in the Netherlands. Statelessness can be both a cause and a consequence of forced displacement. In a migratory context, statelessness may affect people whose statelessness was evident before they migrated and those whose statelessness became apparent during the course of their migration or displacement, including upon failed attempts to remove them from the Netherlands. Data published by Statistics Netherlands (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek) shows that the largest groups of stateless people in the Netherlands come from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Lebanon, Libya, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iraq, and the former Soviet Union.9 Causes of statelessness vary. For instance, 25 countries deny women the right to confer nationality on their children on an equal basis with men, creating risks of statelessness for children born to mothers from these countries.10 Statelessness can also arise due to gaps in nationality laws, following decolonisation processes, State succession and the 6 Statistics Netherlands, StatLine - Bevolking; geslacht, leeftijd, nationaliteit en regio, 19 October 2021, https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/nl/dataset/84727NED/table?ts=1638291785870. 7 Nota staatssecretaris n.a.v. het verslag, https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/detail?id=2020Z25633&did=2021D50778. 8 Statelessness Index, Netherlands, http://index.statelessness.eu. 9 Data obtained upon formal request at Statistics Netherlands (CBS). For more information about statelessness in the migratory context and some of the largest groups of stateless people, see https://statelessjourneys.org/. 10 UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Background Note on Gender Equality, Nationality Laws and Statelessness 2021, 5 March 2021, https://www.refworld.org/docid/604257d34.html. 2