Part I. Introduction and Context of legal identity – including birth registration – in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).90 Furthermore, testimonies from the daily lives of stateless people all over Europe confirm how important documentation and registration are to the enjoyment of rights and protection. “Not having documentation causes problems on many areas of my life. Namely, I cannot find a job… because I cannot be registered as employee if I do not have ID… There is no way out for me unless I receive documents… Since I do not have documents, I cannot prove who am I, and often have to spend night in prison and not being guilty for anything… If I want to have a telephone number I must register my number by using personal ID also, and now for me it is not possible … Everybody thinks of me as different… I have no reputation or status. And I have no way to explain to my children why this is happening to us.” – Romani man, Montenegro91 Indeed, the Roma in Europe – a group that is often (at risk of) stateless(ness) – face a “radical (…) citizenship deficit, that presents in tandem with (…) pervasive exclusion. A dramatic dearth of Roma documentary evidence underpins this deficit (…).”92 But not only Roma face issues with documentation and registration – this is a widespread concern for stateless people (or people at risk of statelessness). “Okeke has always lived in the United Kingdom (UK) and was probably born in the UK although he has no birth certificate. He believes that his parents are British but he lost contact with them as a teenager after fleeing many years of domestic abuse. He is in his thirties. Okeke has faced a life of destitution and isolation in the UK due to the lack of documents and the abuse he suffered as a child. After serving a criminal conviction for theft, his immigration detention started in April 2016 as the Home Office (HO) sought to deport him. Despite being classified by the HO as a person of ‘unknown nationality’, they attempted to deport him to Nigeria on the basis that he has a Nigerian name. Okeke was released in August 2016 on the grounds that his detention was not reasonable anymore. His solicitor intends to make a statelessness application on his behalf.”93 To present a proper legal perspective on nationality and preventing and solving statelessness in Europe, it is thus important to be sensitive towards the administrative side of these issues and concepts. As such, the consideration that the different European 90 91 92 93 24 See also para 1.5.1 (under the header ‘UN human rights treaties’) of this chapter. European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), ‘Roma Belong – Discrimination, Statelessness and Marginalisation of Roma in the Western Balkans and Ukraine’ (errc.org, 26 October 2017) 32 <www. errc.org/uploads/upload_en/fi le/roma-belong.pdf> accessed 22 August 2021. Jacqueline Bhabha, ‘The Politics of Evidence. Roma Citizenship Deficits in Europe’ in Benjamin N Lawrance & Jacqueline Stevens (eds), Citizenship in Question. Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness (Duke University Press 2017) 43–59, 47. ENS, ‘Protecting Stateless Persons from Arbitrary Detention in the United Kingdom’ (ENS 2016) 8 <https://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www.statelessness.eu/fi les/ENS_Detention_Reports_UK.pdf> accessed 22 August 2021. Intersentia