‘For us, being stateless means we don’t have any country or documentation. We feel
very distressed by this… When our son was granted Australian citizenship, we were
extremely happy. It was a big deal, because we have never known in our lives what it
is like to be a citizen’.
Muhammad and Sumaiya, stateless Rohingya parents to three childrenxxi
The Stateless Legal Clinic and Churchill Fellowship
In 2021 the Stateless Legal Clinic (SLC)
was established at the Peter McMullin
Centre on Statelessness (PMCS) as a
decided legal service to educate stateless
children and families about their legal
rights and assist Australian born children
to apply for citizenship.xxii The SLC
partners with the Melbourne Law School
Clinics and the Refugee Advice Casework
Service. In 2023 it was expanded to assist
stateless adults, through an additional
partnership with Refugee Legal. Since its
establishment it has been met with a high
demand for assistance from stateless
families
and
referring
partner
Melbourne Law School students of the SLC lodging applications
organisations and is poised to develop and for citizenship on behalf of their stateless child clients, 2023
expand further in scope and capacity.
Back row: L-R: Thenu Herath, Neha Sarkar, Michael Armanios,
Karrison Driver, Hanna Amin.
Front: Nuria Khasim.
Little is understood about statelessness in
Australia. As the only legal service of its
Photo: Katie Robertson, 2023
kind in Australia, my Fellowship sought to
visit similar international legal services, as well as expert organisations and individuals working
on the issue of childhood statelessness. My aim was to understand how these more established
comparative models operate and function, in order to implement broader service delivery for
stateless children in Australia. I also aimed to understand how the Stateless Legal Clinic may be
successful expanded to assist stateless adults, as well as children. Upon return from this
18