No Legal Bond, No Family Life 13 limited qualitative or quantitative research has been done to highlight the extent of the consequences of such violations - which rights have consequentially been violated and to what extent. This is problematic for several reasons. Firstly, this means that the depth of the problem is not fully understood by both those who work on the issue and those who potentially could. Secondly, this poor understanding has placed obstacles in engaging with the wider international, academic, human rights and NGO scene that currently do not see how this problem relates to their work. Additionally, it does not encourage separate stateless populations to unify in their advocacy for change as there is little understanding of their shared problems in access to rights. However, positively, this deficiency is beginning to be addressed and data is being gradually culminated. What this article wishes to do is to shed light on one consequence of statelessness that is yet to be part of either national or international discourse or addressed in research or reports on the issue. This overlooked problem is the negative and alarming effects of statelessness on the enjoyment of family unity and on the preservation of the family structure. This article wishes to discuss the impact of statelessness on family unity by analysing three significant violations of rights that occur due to this status, focusing on the right to marriage, family unification and the right to own property. 2 Right to Family Life There are no provisions in either of the statelessness conventions that call for the protection of family unity of stateless persons. However the right to family unity in international legal discourse is a well-established right with much literature relating to the importance of it with regards to vulnerable groups such as refugees and IDPs.2 This often focuses on separation and family unity but also comes alongside the importance placed on the right to family life which can be found in a whole range of regional and international instruments such as the European Convention on Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights.3 Alongside this, the importance of the healthy 2 Examples to note would be Family Unity and Refugee Protection, (Cambridge University Press 2003) available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/470a33be0.html; EF Abram, The Child’s Right to Family Unity in International Immigration Law (1995) 17 Law & Policy 397, 397–439, and Helene Lambert, Family Unity in Migration Law: The Evolution of a More Unified Approach in Europe (2013). V Chetail (ed.) Research Handbook on International Law and Migration (Edward Elgar Publishing 2013). 3 Some other instruments in which we can find the right to family unity are Articles 17 and 23 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the International tilburg law review 19 (2014) 11-19