dissolution of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro was 7,058 persons, whereas others recorded as
having “unknown” nationality was much lower, only 1,834 persons.65
Table 2: Number of persons with a residence permit in Sweden who were born outside of Sweden and
registered as “stateless” or with “unknown” nationality, by age, as of 31 December 201566
Born abroad
Age
Stateless
Unknown
0-17
4,664
298
18>
13,135
4,204
Total
17,799
4,502
Table 2 above shows the number of persons with a residence permit in Sweden, who were born outside
Sweden and registered as “stateless” or with “unknown” nationality, disaggregated by age, as of 2015. The
statistics in tables 1 and 2 indicate that 82 per cent of the persons registered as stateless in the Population
Register at the end of 2015 were born outside Sweden, while 18 per cent had been born in Sweden.
Table 3 below indeed shows that Sweden is the second country of birth of stateless persons registered in the
Population Register.
Table 3: Countries of birth of persons with a residence permit who were registered as “stateless”, as of 31
December 201567
Country of birth
Number of persons registered as “stateless”
1. Syria
11,898
2. Sweden
3,781
3. Palestine
1,912
4. Lebanon
894
5. Iraq
710
6. Libya
465
7. Saudi Arabia
323
8. Kuwait
312
9. UAE
281
10. Israel
175
As seen in Table 3, the majority of persons registered as stateless in Sweden were born in Syria, though the
second highest number of persons registered as stateless were born in Sweden. As Sweden grants nationality
to stateless children born in Sweden through a notification procedure rather than automatically at birth,
it is possible that some of these cases are pending acquisition of citizenship by notification (notification
procedure explained in Section 4.3.1 below).
22
65
Breakdown provided by Statistics Sweden in email, 15 October 2012. It is likely that many of these persons have since acquired
Swedish citizenship or another nationality, though it is also possible that some have been found to be stateless.
66
Email from Statistics Sweden, 29 September 2016.
67
Email from Statistics Sweden, 2 March 2016.
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