Statelessness Determination and Protection Status 14. There is no dedicated statelessness determination procedure (SDP) nor stateless protection status in Croatia. This means that national authorities including the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Administration, Ministry of Demography, Family, Youth and Social Policies, have no way to effectively identify who is stateless or at risk of statelessness in the country, nor take steps to solve these cases. The Croatian Government therefore has no legal mechanism by which to identify and grant stateless people protection, in order to implement its international obligations under the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons. 15. The only procedure that regulates statelessness is the Rule Book for Regulation of Status and Work of Citizens of Third Countries in the Republic of Croatia, which regulates the travel document for stateless persons.11 The recent case of Hoti v. Croatia before the European Court of Human Rights highlighted the impact of a lack of a dedicated procedure to determine statelessness and grant protection status to stateless persons on the territory.12 Croatia is yet to amend its legislation to improve its national legal framework in response to the judgement. 16. In general, stateless people in Croatia do not have access to state funded legal aid and are often treated as third country nationals and presumed to hold another nationality. There is very little awareness among national authorities about statelessness, including the Police and Immigration authorities. The Right to a Nationality - Prevention & Reduction of Statelessness 17. The Croatian Citizenship Act contains in its Article 7, a partial safeguard to prevent childhood statelessness in the case of children born on the territory who would otherwise be stateless, and foundlings.13 However, this does not fully meet international standards (including those set out under Articles 7, 2 and 3 of the CRC), as it applies only to children born in Croatia to parents who are also stateless or who are unknown (the case of foundlings). Furthermore, Article 7 also stipulates that the child’s Croatian nationality will cease if it is confirmed that both the parents hold a foreign nationality before the child’s 14th birthday. The law therefore does not prevent children being born stateless to parents who hold a nationality but may be unable to confer this to their child. 18. As a Successor State to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), Croatia chose to grant Croatian nationality based on the former Yugoslav Registries of Republics Nationalities in which residents of the former Yugoslav Republics were registered as holding both Yugoslav citizenship and citizenship of one of the former Republics. However, many people who were presumed to hold the nationality of other former Yugoslav Republics did not actually hold another nationality. Many cases of statelessness 11 See: http://uznr.mrms.hr/wp-content/uploads/propisi2/nacionalni/rsp027.pdf 12 EctHR Application no. 63311/14, Hoti v. Croatia, 26 July 2018 https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22documentcollectionid2%22:[%22GRANDCHAMBER%22,%22CHAMBER%22], %22itemid%22:[%22001-182448%22]} 13 Article 7, Croatian Citizenship Act: https://www.zakon.hr/z/446/Zakon-o-hrvatskom-dr%C5%BEavljanstvu (Official Gazette 110/15). Available in English at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5ac3799f4.html 4