acquire a nationality, barriers to birth registration and unregulated civil status, discrimination against minority groups, and gaps in measures taken to prevent and reduce statelessness more broadly.23 Findings from the ‘Roma Belong’ project,24 confirmed how State succession, changes in nationality laws, and large-scale displacement in the 1990s left many in the Western Balkans at risk of statelessness. Minorities such as Roma, Ashkali, and Egyptians were disproportionately impacted across the region, more likely to have been displaced, and more likely to have been viewed as outsiders in the successor States due to persistent antigypsyism. 17. It is commendable that North Macedonia has taken significant steps to implement the recommendations accepted in the last UPR cycle and issued by the different UN Treaty Bodies (as outlined above). In recent legal reforms, North Macedonia has created solutions to address the lack of identity documents and birth registration of a significant part of the population who had unregulated civil status, and is therefore stateless or at risk of statelessness. The Government is in the process of implementing measures to document the individuals with unregulated status and adopting provisions to prevent further cases of statelessness from arising population, although the effectiveness of these solutions will depend on their implementation in practice. Some concerns also remain due to gaps that have not yet been addressed by the Government, as detailed below. 18. North Macedonia lacks comprehensive, accurate data and statistics on the number of stateless persons and lacks robust procedures for the identification of statelessness and in its territory. There is also a lack of disaggregated data on ethnicity. The most recent national census was conducted in 2021, and ‘stateless’ was specifically listed as a census category. The official results published in March 2022 indicated that there were 584 people recorded as stateless.25 However, there are concerns that some stateless people in North Macedonia remain unidentified.26 19. Separately, as of August 2023, MYLA reported 353 identified people at risk of statelessness; of whom 105 had undetermined nationality (long-term habitual residents affected by the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia) and 248 had unregulated nationality (people at risk of statelessness because their births or names are not registered in the civil registry).27 A 2018-2019 Government-initiated campaign to identify and register people who lack a birth certificate or other civil documentation resulted in the identification of 700 people at risk of statelessness (the majority of whom were Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian).28 It is unclear whether these 700 people who responded to the public call were also identified as stateless during the 2021 census. 23 See further information at ENS, Statelessness Index: North Macedonia, https://index.statelessness.eu/country/northmacedonia. 24 European Network on Statelessness, European Roma Rights Centre, Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, ‘Roma Belong. Statelessness, Discrimination and Marginalisation of Roma in the Western Balkans and Ukraine’ (26 October 2017) available at: https://www.statelessness.eu/updates/publication/roma-belong-statelessness-discrimination-and-marginalisation-romawestern. 25 Republic of North Macedonia, State Statistical Office, available at: http://www.stat.gov.mk/Publikacii/knigaIX.pdf, p. 591. 26 Republic of Macedonia State Statistical Office, ‘Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in the Republic of Macedonia, 2002 (2002) available at: http://www.stat.gov.mk/Publikacii/knigaIX.pdf. 27 Casework information from UNHCR supported project "Advocacy, legal assistance and representation to PoCs and Prevention and Reduction of Statelessness’’, implemented by the Macedonian Young Lawyers Association (MYLA). 28 Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, ‘Action for Registration of Persons in the Birth Register’ (2014) available at: http://www.mtsp.gov.mk/akcija-za-evidencija-na-lica-vo-maticna-kniga-na-rodenite.nspx (MK). The majority of unregistered persons who completed the public call questionnaire in 2018-19 were Roma. This information is presented in the Ombudsperson’s Special Report of May 2021 on the implementation of the Law on Persons without regulated civil status, available at: http://ombudsman.mk/upload/Posebni%20izvestai/2021/Neevidentirani%20lica2021.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2_ercjJ9a54COrieEYcBmMOciAUq7TWA1MXjZ-8CCC6eu-xEzxF2uMQcY. However, this data relates only to those who came forward to register under this specific public call and does not include others affected by this issue, including long-term habitual residents affected by the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, about whom no official data exists. 4