Break-up of states. In the early 1990s, more than half of the world’s stateless lost their nationality because of the break-up of states. The turbulent dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Federation caused internal and external migration that left hundreds of thousands stateless throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Twenty years later, tens of thousands of people in the region remain stateless or at risk of statelessness. Abandonment after the post-colonial formation of a state is another cause of statelessness. Large populations have remained without citizenship as a result of such state-building processes for decades in Africa and Asia. Complex laws. Although international law places limits on the powers of states to grant nationality, states do have the right to determine whom they consider to be a citizen. They have adopted a wide range of approaches. With this complex international maze of citizenship laws, many people find that they fall through the cracks. For instance, in some countries, citizenship is lost automatically after prolonged residence in another country. Simple obstacles. Failure or inability to register children at birth, a pervasive problem in many developing countries, leaves many children without proof of where they were born, who their parents were or where their parents were from. Not having a birth certificate does not automatically indicate the lack of citizenship, but in many countries, and in today’s increasingly mobile world of migrants, not having proof of birth, origins or legal identity increases the risk of statelessness. Discrimination against women. While a number of countries in sub-Saharan and North Africa, the Middle East and Asia have started to reform legislation to address this, in at least 30 countries only men can pass their citizenship on to their children. The children of women from these countries who marry foreigners can end up stateless. Racial and ethnic discrimination. An underlying theme of most situations of statelessness is ethnic and racial discrimination that leads to exclusion, where political will is often lacking to resolve the problem. Via decree, Iraq’s former President Saddam Hussein stripped the Faili Kurds of their Iraqi citizenship in one day (in 1980). While most Roma and other minority groups do have citizenship of the countries where they live, thousands continue to be stateless in Europe. Since states gained independence or boundaries were established, groups such as the Muslim residents (Rohingya) of northern Rakhine state in Myanmar, some hill tribes in Thailand, the Bidoon in the Gulf States and various nomadic groups have been excluded from citizenship in the only countries they have lived in for generations. Often, such groups have become so marginalised that even when legislation changes to grant access to citizenship, they encounter huge obstacles and bureaucratic red tape. Often, the cost of actually obtaining citizenship and related documentation is almost insurmountable. Examples of populations that are typically characterised by statelessness include: the Rohingya from western Myanmar, the Bidoon from the Gulf region, Kurds from Syria, ethnic Nepalese persons from Bhutan, and “Russian speakers” from Estonia and Latvia. 8 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, Article 1. Page 4 of 26