2025 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 7(1) processes provide the foundations through which human movement is controlled, welfare is distributed, and authorities are recognised.112 Scholarship and reports relating to documentation in Syrian territories under multiple state-like administrations reveals that the issuance of identity documents can also feed into conflict, with different parallel administrations refusing to recognise one another’s documents with the purpose of de-legitimising other state or aspirant-state bodies. Individuals can sometimes be punished for holding or using the documentation of rival administrations. 113 In such cases, the problems associated with a lack of identity documents and statelessness can be further compounded. Efforts have been made to ensure reciprocity in the recognition of documents issued by non-state actors and autonomous administrations, but the results have been limited.114 Notwithstanding the central role that autonomous administrations can play in conflicts where sovereignty is contested, broad recognition of a variety of documents in contexts of displacement is vital in protecting against statelessness.115 Recent literature points out that, sometimes (semi-)autonomous administrations function in ways that do not necessarily aspire to statehood, nor attempt to directly challenge the legitimacy of other state-like entities.116 Thomas McGee shows that in the northern part of Syria, the Kurdish-led self-administration has provided documents to their populations that are not necessarily connected to aspirations of statehood. Included amongst the documented population are (formerly) stateless Kurds.117 The documents do not provide proof of citizenship, but they do provide equal access to resources and services, mitigating the socio-economic barriers associated with statelessness. Self-registration and self-administration, then, can both be a source of conflict and potentially protect against it. It can also be used to reduce the socio-economic inequalities and exclusions associated with statelessness within self-administered territories. If used in tandem with broad campaigns for external and international recognition of documents issued by autonomous administrations, this mode of resistance could provide protections against long-term and intergenerational impacts of statelessness in situations of displacement or migration. However, minoritised and stateless people are not always represented within non-state administrations, or they can be subject to the governance of multiple parallel administrations.118 Further these administrations can have exclusionary ideologies and practices themselves. In Myanmar, following the military coup of 2021, civil conflict has intensified. Semi-autonomous administrative bodies 112 Torpey (n 24); Colin J Bennett and David Lyon, Playing the Identity Card: Surveillance, Security and Identification in Global Perspective (Routledge 2013). 113 Grant-Brook (n 50); McGee (n 36). 114 Adamczyk and Doumit (n 50); McGee (n 36). 115 For studies on the impact of statelessness in asylum systems, see ENS, Stateless Journeys (n 48). 116 Sosnowski and Klem (n 89) 761. 117 McGee (n 36). 118 Grant-Brook (n 50). 26