Chapter 6 Chapter 6 Stateless People In 2018 millions of people were not considered nationals by any State – knowing who and where they are is the first step towards ending statelessness Improving global data on statelessness remained a significant and important challenge in 2018. Stateless people, who are not considered as nationals by any State, often live in precarious situations on the margins of society and are frequently not included in States’ data collection exercises, including censuses. Despite the increased awareness of statelessness globally and stronger efforts by States and UNHCR to encourage and capacitate governments to identify stateless individuals on their territory, fewer than half of countries have official statistics on stateless people. This year UNHCR was able to report on people coming under UNHCR’s statelessness mandate for 78 countries, based on information reported by States and other sources [Figure 20]. 80 In addition, Annex Table 7 includes countries marked with an asterisk where UNHCR has information about the unhcr > Global trends 2018 existence of stateless populations but where reliable figures were not available. These countries remain priorities for UNHCR in its efforts toward improved data on statelessness. Data on some 3.9 million stateless persons are captured in this report, but the true global figure is estimated to be significantly higher. The identification of stateless people is key to addressing difficulties they face and to enabling governments, UNHCR and others to prevent and reduce statelessness. Action 10 of UNHCR’s Global Action Plan to end Statelessness (GAP), 81 the guiding 80 UNHCR’s statistics on statelessness focus mainly on de jure stateless people: those not considered as nationals by any State under the operation of its law. However, data from some countries also include people of undetermined nationality. 81 Global Action Plan to End Statelessness, 4 November 2014. See: www.refworld.org/docid/545b47d64.html. 51