    constitutes ‘Asia’, whether geographically or politically. Indeed, in Vitit Muntarbhorn’s important work on Challenges of International Law in the Asia Region, he acknowledges the definitional challenge, quoting Ruskola’s provocative view that the ‘short answer’ to the question ‘Where is Asia?’, is ‘not in Europe’.21 Thus, on one view ‘the definition of Asia is essentially negative and geographically indeterminate’.22 Furthermore, we could eschew the idea of Asia as a region and examine instead subregions, such as Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.23 Given the nascent scholarship on statelessness, in this book we have adopted an inclusive approach to the region of Asia, encompassing all of these subregions, consistent with the approach of the UNHCR – the UN agency mandated to identify, protect and reduce statelessness.24 On the second question, given its breadth we may well question whether anything is to be gained from focusing on such a large and diverse region. It is of course true that, as Muntarbhorn observes, ‘the many different religions and cultures in the Asia regions. . . militate against a sense of unity rather than uniqueness’.25 It would be impossible (and inaccurate) to generalize and seek to theorize one universal approach to statelessness in Asia, whether we consider the issue from the perspective of participation in the international legal system or from the grounded incidence of statelessness. Some countries in the region disproportionately produce statelessness. For example, 69 per cent of reported stateless people in the region are Rohingya from Myanmar26 – the largest known stateless population in the world. The Rohingya also make up 99 per cent of the 1.24 million displaced stateless people in Asia.27 That said, it is important not to see Asia as a ‘problem’ region, but also as a region that has found innovative and effective solutions to 21 Vitit Muntarbhorn, Challenges of International Law in the Asian Region: An Introduction (Chulalongkorn University 2021) 3. 22 Teema Ruskola, ‘Where is Asia? When is Asia? Theorising Comparative Law and International Law’ (2011) 44 UC Davis Law Review 882–883 quoted in Muntarbhorn (n 21) 3. 23 This was the approach for example in The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law wherein the regional section has an independent chapter on each of these subregions: Cathryn Costello, Michelle Foster, and Jane McAdam (eds), The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law (Oxford University Press 2021). 24 See UNHCR, ‘2022 Asia and the Pacific Regional Trends Report’ (n 12). 25 Muntarbhorn (n 21) 3. 26 UNHCR, ‘2022 Asia and the Pacific Regional Trends Report’ (n 12) 28. 27 ibid. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009399555.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press