32. The bureaucratic requirements of this procedure are taxing, and often impossible to fulfil, particularly for undocumented women who give birth in foreign countries. Due to their own lack of documentation and irregular status, they often don’t give birth in hospitals, and therefore, do not always receive birth certificates. At best, birth notifications are received, that do not contain all the information that the Albanian authorities require. Many parents do not manage to address all the bureaucratic hurdles linked to the legalisation of birth certificates in the foreign country and travel back to Albania before obtaining a certificate in the form required by the Albanian authorities. In such cases, the certificates are not legalised, and the children’s births are not registered in Albania regardless of whether the parents are Albanian. Very often they are unable to return to the country where their children were born to resolve the issue, so there is a higher risk of statelessness among these children. 33. Under a 2012 agreement between TLAS and the Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, TLAS notifies the Ministry of cases of citizens who require legalisation of their documents, but who do not have the economic or physical means to carry out this process themselves. This is a free service offered by TLAS, which has served thousands of primarily Romani beneficiaries, who would otherwise have remained at risk of statelessness. However, as this is not a state-run service, there is likely to be a multitude of Albanian citizens who are powerless in the face of a similar situation. 34. This problem is particularly significant for Roma children born in Greece where the authorities refuse firstly to issue a full birth certificate to those irregularly living in the country, and secondly to verify it for legalisation purposes with the Albanian authorities, who in turn refuse to acknowledge simple foreign acts for civil registration purposes. 35. According to a recent report by TLAS and UNHCR, at least 1,031 persons are at risk of statelessness in Albania, mostly due to difficulties in having their nationality confirmed. The total number is likely to be higher, as persons at risk of statelessness often remain invisible and are hard to identify. According to the report, 97% of those recorded as being at risk of statelessness in Albania are children. The primary causes reported are: being born outside of Albanian territory (53%); being born to parents who are not married (12%); being born at home and not in hospital (10%); or being born in hospitals or maternity units that hold incorrect personal data about the mother (9%). Among those at risk of statelessness who were born outside Albanian territory, the majority were born in Greece. Romani and Egyptian communities are particularly affected by this phenomenon. As the report states: “Members of Roma and Egyptian communities are disproportionately affected; and they make up half of all recorded cases at risk of statelessness despite representing between 0.4% and 3.3% of the total Albanian population”.28 28 TLAS and UNHCR 2018 report Mapping the Population at Risk of Statelessness in Albania”, May 2018 available here http://www.un.org.al/sites/default/files/Mapping%20of%20the%20population%20at%20risk%20of%20statelessness_ %20ENGLISH.PDF 8