residence rights or access to documentation. 16 Without such routes, stateless people can remain in long‑term insecurity, facing restricted access to services and rights – conditions that may heighten vulnerability to exploitation and trafficking. For many children, these protection gaps and their statelessness only become evident when they transition to adulthood. It is a pivotal period for stateless, migrant, and trafficked young people because many of the rights and protections available to them as children either expire or become significantly harder to access. As young people turn 18, and particularly in the period between 18 and 21, criteria to acquire a nationality often changes and (particularly for those entitled to acquire nationality based on birth in the territory or who must register with an embassy), and unresolved nationality issues can crystallise into long--term statelessness. At the same time, young adults may lose child--focused protection and fall into irregular status if their statelessness has not been identified and resolved or if the State does not offer pathways to regularisation, leaving them at risk of detention and removal. Ensuring a secure legal identity and nationality before adulthood is therefore essential to safeguarding their rights, preventing cycles of detention or marginalisation, and enabling them to transition into adulthood with stability, protection, and opportunities for full participation in society. Addressing these gaps is of utmost importance, including establishing or strengthening childfriendly statelessness determination procedures that lead to dedicated status and rights, and ensuring that protection responses to trafficking victims incorporate statelessness‑sensitive approaches across all stages, from identification to longer‑term solutions. States should: - - - - - Establish statelessness determination procedures, leading to a dedicated protection status in line with the 1954 Convention, that are accessible to children and operate in a child‑friendly, trauma‑informed manner Promote consistent identification of nationality‑related vulnerabilities and more robust protection outcomes for victims, including by offering practical guidance to support statelessness‑informed trafficking responses among authorities, and ensuring that national referral mechanisms and anti‑trafficking systems include referral to procedures to determine a child’s nationality where there are indications of statelessness Building the capacity of frontline actors to identify and respond to statelessness among trafficking victims, including border officials, social workers, law enforcement, health workers, guardians, and child protection authorities Coordinated multi-stakeholder responses should be promoted, including specifically strengthening cooperation between anti‑trafficking, asylum, child‑protection, and competent authorities for statelessness and nationality matters. Integrate nationality determination into best‑interests assessments, durable solutions, and family tracing procedures Ensure access to regularisation pathways for children and young people transitioning into adulthood ENS, Statelessness Determination and Protection in Europe: Good practice, challenges and risks, October 2025; S. Nonnenmacher and R. Cholewinski, ‘The nexus between statelessness and migration’. In: Edwards A, van Waas L, editors. Nationality and Statelessness under International Law, Cambridge University Press, 2014. p. 247–63. 16