Addressing statelessness in Europe’s refugee response INTRODUCTION Statelessness is an overlooked and often invisible feature of the forced migration context in Europe. Actors involved in the refugee response are increasingly discovering that some of the men, women and children they work with face nationality problems. According to Eurostat, of the four million people who applied for asylum in the EU in 2015-2018, more than 115,000 were recorded as ‘stateless’, of ‘unknown nationality’, or their nationality was recorded as ‘Palestine’. i Many more refugees come from countries with problematic nationality laws, such as Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Eritrea or Sudan, meaning they or their children are at risk of statelessness. ii People affected by statelessness risk discrimination on the grounds of their statelessness if reasonable accommodation is not made for their nationality problems in international protection procedures and the provision of essential services. Yet, most countries in Europe are inadequately prepared to respond. Only a handful of European States have statelessness determination procedures in place, risking violations of the specific international and regional obligations held by States towards stateless people and in respect of the right to a nationality. iii Although actors involved in the refugee response are beginning to recognise the challenge that statelessness poses in the context of current forced migration trends in Europe, little has been published on this to date and statelessness rarely appears on the migration and asylum policy agenda. iv To address this gap, in 2017, the European Network on Statelessness (ENS) and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI) set out to examine the relationship between statelessness and forced migration in Europe, to build links with refugees affected by statelessness, and to interrogate the knowledge and attitudes of key regional and national stakeholders involved in the response to forced displacement in Europe. The aim of the #StatelessJourneys project is to generate an evidence base to inform the design and dissemination of analytical and practical tools for advocacy, capacity-building, awareness-raising and community engagement, to protect the rights of stateless refugees and prevent new cases of statelessness arising in the migration context in Europe. In 2017-18, project partners carried out scoping research to better understand the extent of the challenges. A questionnaire was shared with ENS members, which generated a snapshot of key issues in 15 countries. This was supplemented by a pilot study in three of these countries: Greece, Serbia and the Netherlands. Interviews and focus group discussions were held in each country and at regional level (March-June 2018) to capture information on the knowledge and attitudes of four key stakeholder groups: refugees affected by statelessness, civil society actors, national authorities, and regional authorities. This briefing summarises the research findings, outlining key emerging challenges, gaps and opportunities for action to protect the rights of stateless refugees and prevent new cases of statelessness arising in the context of forced migration in Europe. A series of awareness-raising, training and advocacy tools, including position papers on countries of origin of refugee populations affected by statelessness; country briefings on statelessness and forced migration in European countries; webinars; podcasts; and other advocacy tools are available for download and wider use from the Stateless Journeys website: https://statelessjourneys.org. 2