Country briefing: Statelessness and refugees in Serbia WHAT ARE THE PRIORITY AREAS FOR ACTION TO ADDRESS STATELESSNESS IN THE SERBIAN CONTEXT? • • • • • A statelessness determination procedure and protection regime should be established in law to enable Serbia to meet its international obligations under the 1954 Convention and reduce the risk of arbitrary detention. Procedural clarity and clear guidance is required to support the accurate identification, registration and recording of statelessness and nationality problems among refugee arrivals. Access to birth registration (and an internationally recognised birth certificate) must be guaranteed for all children born in Serbia irrespective of the status of their parents, and the child’s right to a nationality upheld in practice. Safeguards in Serbian nationality law must be implemented in practice to prevent childhood statelessness arising from the current refugee context in Serbia. A facilitated route to naturalisation should be implemented and barriers to naturalisation removed for stateless persons in Serbia in line with the 1954 Convention. STATELESSNESS: THE BASICS A stateless person is defined in the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons and international customary law as "a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law". It is someone who does not have a nationality of any country. Some people are born stateless, while others become stateless over the course of their lives. Although stateless people may sometimes also be refugees, the two categories are distinct in international law. Some of the main causes of statelessness are gaps in nationality laws, discrimination, forced displacement, state succession, restrictive administrative practices, and arbitrary deprivation of nationality. Statelessness is a hidden problem due to the lack of reliable data on stateless populations. UNHCR reports figures for only 3.9 million of the estimated 10 million stateless people around the world in its Global Trends Report 2017. Being affected by statelessness often means not having a birth certificate or any other legal documentation, not having or being able to pass on a nationality to your children, not being able to access formal education and other services, not being able to travel, and facing many more legal and administrative barriers. To be stateless is often to be ‘legally invisible’. ABOUT THIS BRIEFING This briefing is published by the European Network on Statelessness and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion as part of the #StatelessJourneys project (https://statelessjourneys.org) examining the relationship between statelessness and forced migration in Europe. It is based on findings from scoping research in Greece, Serbia and the Netherlands, and questionnaires completed by ENS members in other European countries. It is not intended to provide a comprehensive picture, but rather to draw attention to some of the main challenges relating to the intersection of statelessness and forced migration, point to areas for further research, and make recommendations for action to address these challenges at national and regional levels. 4