Joint Submission to the Human Rights Council at the 43rd Session of the Universal Periodic Review MONTENEGRO Introduction 1. Phiren Amenca, the European Network on Statelessness (ENS), and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI) make this joint submission to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), on the right to a nationality and human rights challenges pertaining to statelessness in Montenegro. 2. Phiren Amenca is a Roma-led civil society organisation. The organisation is based in Montenegro and works on all the pressing issues for the Roma community: education, housing, employment, legal status, media, healthcare and antigypsyism. Phiren Amenca was awarded for the Best European Youth Project 2020 Award from 19 countries and more than 40 applications. 3. The European Network on Statelessness (ENS)1 is a civil society alliance of NGOs, lawyers, academics, and other independent experts committed to addressing statelessness in Europe. Based in London, it currently has over 170 members in 41 European countries. ENS organises its work around three pillars – law and policy development, awarenessraising, and capacity-building. ENS provides expert advice and support to a range of stakeholders, including governments. This submission partially draws on information and analysis from ENS’s Statelessness Index, which covers Montenegro.2 4. The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI)3 is the first and only human rights NGO dedicated to working on statelessness at the global level. ISI’s mission is to promote inclusive societies by realising and protecting everyone’s right to a nationality. The Institute has made over 90 country-specific UPR submissions on the human rights of stateless persons. ISI has also compiled summaries of the key human rights challenges related to statelessness in all countries under review under the 23rd to the 41st UPR Sessions. 5. This submission focuses on: I. II. III. IV. Statelessness determination procedure and the rights of stateless people Children’s right to birth registration and to a nationality Discrimination against minoritized communities Statelessness population data 1 For more information, see https://www.statelessness.eu. ENS, Statelessness Index: Montenegro, https://index.statelessness.eu/country/montenegro. 3 For more information, see https://www.institutesi.org/. 2 1