Self-identification of statelessness Data pertaining to statelessness in Australia comes primarily from people self-identifying as lacking a nationality. In the absence of formal mechanisms for identifying statelessness, it is possible that individuals who are stateless are not being correctly identified (and not self-identifying) or that their identification of statelessness is being inadvertently overwritten by Department officers and/or decision makers due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of the issue. “There are assumptions, and it probably comes from a kind of an administrative perspective at the very beginning that people are identified as a certain nationality. I’m thinking of examples of children that are just noted as whatever nationality their parents are, and that includes instances in my experiences where I’ve listed them as stateless on their application, but the Department just say, ‘No.’ And they just don’t even engage with it.” — Australian Legal Practitioner The process by which a person is identified as stateless was described by a Department employee interviewed as: “(A)ll data on ‘stateless’ persons, is based on a person’s ‘nationality’ as recorded in departmental systems. This does not mean that a statelessness assessment has been undertaken, but instead it is often based on self-declaration in application forms and/or at interview.” ­— Department of Home Affairs Officer The UNHCR Multi-Country Office Canberra noted the challenges of a self-identification approach to determining statelessness in statistics because, quite often, stateless individuals identify their country of origin in their visa application but do not have their statelessness status listed on their visa. This means they are not captured in Australia’s statelessness statistics. Self-reported statistics concerning statelessness in Australia are further problematic, as somebody’s ‘country of origin’ may be confused with their ‘nationality.’ As noted by one policy expert interviewed for this study: “(A) lot of people who are stateless, might not know that they are legally stateless. They might say (in their initial interview with the Department), ‘I’m from Burma.’ It might be a misunderstanding or a mistranslation, et cetera. I’m sure the statistics on statelessness, because they are mostly self-reported, are going to be very inaccurate.” — NGO Policy Officer Over recent years, the UNHCR Multi-Country Office Canberra has made a concerted effort to improve data collection and analysis of stateless people in Australia for the annual UNHCR Global Trends Reports, by drawing on Australian government statistics. UNHCR notes, however, that these statistics cannot be considered as reliable and/or comprehensive in absence of a Statelessness Determination Procedure, something that they have long highlighted the need for in Australia. Self-reporting can also contribute to a perception within government agencies and by decision makers that somebody may be lying about their statelessness. Legal practitioners interviewed for this study further identified particular ‘trends’ or ‘views’ held by the department about particular groups, based on assumptions about the legitimacy of their self-identification as stateless. 4.1.3 Statelessness is not well understood within government agencies and relevant service providers “I don’t think we hear the voices of stateless people as distinct from refugees. We would recognise that they are part of the refugee population but not necessarily hear a distinctive voice.” — Refugee Support Worker Multiple stakeholders interviewed for this research consistently identified limited understandings of statelessness and stateless people’s needs within government agencies and/or relevant service providers. This included a conflation between statelessness and refugee status, despite them being distinct legal statuses and concepts. “The concept of statelessness is often conflated with the concepts of seeking protection or being a refugee…(T)hose issues don’t always go hand in hand and in fact, those two concepts present their own sets of barriers or their own sets of problems that you’d hope that a decision maker would take into account.” — Ahmad Sawan, Australian Legal Practitioner, Refugee Advice Casework Service Research indicated that many officials, decision makers and professionals conflate statelessness with refugee status or assume that stateless people are automatically covered by existing protection frameworks. “I think the Department see statelessness as an additional limb to the process of assessing protection as opposed to its own standalone issue that needs addressing.” — Ahmad Sawan, Australian Legal Practitioner, Refugee Advice Casework Service Understanding Statelessness in Australia | Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness 35