2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(1) As many as 8,200 pregnant Venezuelan women have entered Colombia since 2018 with no assurances that their children will be granted citizenship under Colombia’s nationality laws, effectively rendering these children stateless. 14 Venezuelans are often also unable to access personal identification documents to obtain status in Colombia, further enhancing their effective statelessness and subsequent vulnerability to exploitation and modern slavery. 15 Venezuelan women and girls in Colombia are often forced to work in high-risk and low-wage industries including sex trafficking in border communities and larger cities such as Cucuta and Cartagena. 16 Modern slavery research focuses on identifying hidden populations, and stateless persons of all types are among the hidden populations vulnerable to exploitation that we must also find. III DIFFICULTIES IN MEASUREMENT PRESENTED BY STATELESSNESS AND MODERN SLAVERY Several of the challenges in counting stateless persons highlighted by statelessness researchers are present in modern slavery research. 17 This section will address challenges in both statelessness and modern slavery scholarship related to: A) global database reporting and definitional challenges, B) self-identification among target research populations, C) potential incentives of governments to undercount or not count these populations, and D) ethical concerns in research. This section includes promising methods used in the modern slavery field that may improve current measurement efforts in statelessness research. A Voluntary Global Database Reporting and Definitional Challenges The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (‘UNHCR’) Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2017 report measurement of statelessness relies on country operations to provide estimates of these populations. 18 Reliance on statelessness reporting to UNHCR is similar to the role of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s (‘UNODC’) Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (‘GLOTIP’). 19 GLOTIP depends on voluntary reporting of participating states with similar comparability and data capacity challenges. In both fields, there is a global need for greater data management capacity and coordinated data collection standards and shared methodology. 20 Definitional challenges in modern slavery research include varying national standards that are not always comparable across countries. These issues are similar to challenges in identifying stateless persons that may be excluded due to other 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Lucía Ramirez Bolivar and Silvia Ruiz, ‘Babies without a Homeland That the Venezuelan Exodus May Leave in Colombia’, Dejusticia (Web Page, 2018) <https://www.dejusticia.org/en/babies-without-a-homeland-that-the-venezuelan-exodusmay-leave-in-colombia/>. The World’s Stateless (n 4) 67–68. Forthcoming research by Minderoo Foundation, 2020. Van Waas, de Chickera and Albarazi (n 3). United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2017 (Report, 2017) (‘Global Trends 2017) <https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2017/>. Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (Report, United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime, December 2018) <https://www.unodc.org/unodc/data-and-analysis/glotip.html>. Lily Chen, Petra Nahmias and Sebastian Steinmuller, UNHCR Statistical Reporting on Statelessness (Report, UNHCR October 2019) 12–13 <https://www.unhcr.org/5d9e182e7.pdf>. 144