PART 1: STATELESSNESS – KEY CONCEPTS What is ‘Statelessness’? ‘We are stateless – we have no country. This is very hard. In our home country we had nothing, our life was very difficult. We couldn’t do anything, go anywhere, choose our path.’ Nur, stateless Rohingya mother of fourxxix A stateless person is someone who does not have a nationality of any country. This means they are not recognised as ‘belonging’ to any country.xxx The international legal definition of a ‘stateless person’ is ‘a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law.’xxxi There are estimated to be between 10-15 million stateless people in the world, a third of which are children.xxxii The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that a child born in statelessness at least every 10 minutes.xxxiii Stateless children face barriers to a range of essential human rights by virtue of having no nationality, including access to education and healthcare.xxxiv 27