Policy Briefing July 2019 Urgent Reforms Needed to Improve UK’s Approach to Statelessness This briefing recommends three urgent reforms to improve the UK’s approach to statelessness: 1) Extend legal aid to statelessness applications under Part 14 of the Immigration Rules in England and Wales. 2) Introduce a statutory right of appeal against refusal of an application for leave to remain as a stateless person under Part 14 of the Immigration Rules. 3) Waive or reduce the fees for British citizenship applications for all stateless persons. A stateless person is someone ‘who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’ according to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954 Convention). People become stateless in a number of ways. The dissolution of states (such as the break-up of the Soviet Union) and the formation of new states (with large populations left out of the nation-building process) have been major causes of statelessness. Laws, regulations and administrative requirements and/or discrimination leave certain individuals or groups deprived of citizenship in some jurisdictions, for example where laws do not permit women to confer their nationality to their children. In some cases, lack of birth registration or records makes it extremely difficult for an individual to prove whether they are or are not considered a national of any state. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is convening a global event, the High-Level Segment on Statelessness, in Geneva on 7 October 2019. This will be an intergovernmental meeting of United Nations Member States to mark the mid-point of UNHCR’s IBELONG Campaign to End Statelessness by 2024. This event provides the UK government with an important opportunity to highlight its achievements to date towards eradicating statelessness, and to pledge to address critical shortcomings in the remaining 5 years of the IBELONG Campaign. We recommend that the UK commits at the 2019 High-Level event to undertake the following reforms by the end of 2020: 1) Extend legal aid to statelessness applications under Part 14 of the Immigration Rules and to any related administrative review procedures in England and Wales. This change would further the Government’s aim to direct legal aid funding to areas where it is most needed, achieve parity in access to legal aid for stateless persons in all regions of the UK, and comply with international standards and UNHCR guidance. 2) Introduce a statutory right of appeal against refusal of an application for leave to remain as a stateless person under Part 14 of the Immigration Rules. This appeal should be to an independent tribunal, in line with the appeals process for asylum claims. This would provide stateless applicants with an effective right of appeal and bring the UK in line with international standards and UNHCR guidance. 3) Reduce the fees for British citizenship applications for all stateless persons to the administrative cost level; waive citizenship fees for stateless persons who cannot afford to pay them; and refund any fees in excess of the administrative cost to applicants whose citizenship applications are refused. This would fulfil the UK’s obligations under two international treaties on statelessness to which the UK is a party, the 1954 Convention and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961 Convention). Further information about the harm caused by statelessness, and what the UK can do to resolve it, follows. 1