on the part of the authorities and the public at large about statelessness as a human rights issue, entailing specific legal obligations for the State. Consequently, the only information readily available about the origin and background of persons registered as stateless is the information on country of birth in the Population Register. However, as mentioned in Section 2.2.1 above, only persons holding a residence permit in Sweden are registered in the Population Register. As indicated in Table 3 in Section 2.2.2.1 above, the majority of persons registered as stateless in the Population Register were born in Syria, Sweden or Palestine, while the majority of persons registered with “unknown” nationality were born in Sweden, Somalia or Syria, in addition to those whose country of birth is also unknown. What can also be deduced from publicly available statistics is that there are a significant number of stateless children amongst the stateless persons who enter Sweden each year. In 2015, 35 per cent of the stateless asylum-seekers were children. Tables 1 and Tables 2 show that 82 per cent of the persons registered as stateless in Sweden in 2015 were born abroad, out of whom 26 per cent are children. In addition, 18 per cent of the persons registered as stateless were born in Sweden, out of whom 96 per cent were under 18 years at the end of 2015 (see Table 9 in Section 4.3.1.1 below). In order to get an understanding of the background of the asylum-seekers registered as stateless in the Register of the SMA, the consultant requested access to a representative sample of decisions made by the SMA in asylum cases involving applicants recorded as “stateless” or with “unknown” nationality. However, it needs to be recalled that the background of the stateless asylum-seekers arriving in Sweden has changed somewhat since 2012, when the decisions were selected and reviewed by the consultant. At that time, Palestinians constituted the largest group of stateless applicants for asylum, as shown in the section below, while persons originating from Syrian constitute the main one today. The SMA estimates that around 80 per cent of the stateless applicants for asylum in 2014 originated from Syria. Sweden’s recognition of Palestine as a State has also changed the previous practice of registering all Palestinian applicants as stateless. The SMA has adopted a Judicial Position on the migration-related consequences of Sweden’s recognition of Palestine in March 2015,77 which affirms that Palestine must be considered to have citizens, even though the State lacks citizenship legislation. However, as the citizenship has deficiencies, citizens, in certain situations, should be considered as de facto stateless. It further states that persons who can show it is probable that they are registered in the West Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem can be registered as citizens of Palestine, and that children born to such persons shall also be registered as citizens of Palestine. Other Palestinians shall be considered stateless, be registered as such, and have their asylum claim assessed in relation to their former country of habitual residence. 2.3.2 Profile of stateless asylum-seekers The SMA shared 24 decisions made during the first nine months of 2012 in respect of persons who had been considered as “stateless” or with “unknown” nationality. The selection was done by the SMA and comprised 12 decisions concerning stateless persons and 12 decisions concerning persons with “unknown” nationality. The majority (11) of the stateless persons were recorded as Palestinians, with Gaza, Jordan, Iraq and Algeria indicated as their country or region of former habitual residence, while one decision concerned a stateless Bidoon from Kuwait. In two of the cases from Jordan, the applicants claimed to be Palestinians from the West Bank and Syria, but these claims were found not to be credible. Based on the information presented and the investigation conducted, they were instead determined to have habitually resided in 77 26 Rättsligt ställningstagande angående de migrationsrättsliga konsekvenserna av Sveriges erkännande av Palestina, SR 11/2015, available at: http://goo.gl/PoR4LZ. M A P P I N G S TAT E L E S S N E S S I N S W E D E N