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Agata Szwed, Statelessness in the Context of the Migration Crisis in Europe: A Growing...
Council (Denmark), France terre d’asile (France), Informationsverbund
Asyl und Migration (Germany), the Greek Council for Refugees (Greece), the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (Hungary), Consiglio Italiano per
i Rifugiati (Italy), ASKV Refugee Support (Netherlands), the Norwegian
Refugee Council (Norway), the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights
(Poland), Accem (Spain), the Swedish Organization Against Statelessness (Sweden), Humanrights.ch (Switzerland), Refugee Rights Turkey (Turkey), and the Refugee Council (UK). Civil society organisations can be
found in all European countries. Their commitment, also supported by
reliable knowledge,43 helps to include people from the margins of society
into active civic life.
6 Conclusion
Statelessness is a global issue, and also both a legal and a human
problem that cries out for real solutions. The lack of ties in the form
of nationality between the individual and the state poses a threat to
human security, as well as to national and international security. The
condition of ‘rightlessness’, the denial of human rights to which stateless
persons are condemned, is a worldwide phenomenon which demands
our attention. Despite the development of the international human rights protection system after World War II, no solution has been found to
eliminate the problem of the lack of the ‘right to have rights’ formulated
by Hannah Arendt.
Statelessness remains a side issue in the debate on the migration
crisis, which is a signum temporis of modern times, but this is a growing
problem that must be tackled. In the near future, it will start to weigh
more and more heavily on the European and international community. The current migration crisis in Europe has some specific features:
the origins of asylum seekers are more diverse than in previous waves,
many come from farther away than neighbouring EU countries and the
situation in their homelands during the last 10 years has been unstable,
without signs of any quick positive solutions in the near future. As mentioned, there is a new stateless generation growing up in Europe consisting of children of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who came as migrants
or as refugees (and often even as children without an adult guardian
or carer, which is why no one can prove their identity), and whose status is so vulnerable due, most often, to the paternal ius sanguinis, the
discrimination of women in nationality law, or internal conflict. Not all
43
Reliable information on statelessness and citizenship is provided, eg, by the Institute
on Statelessness and Inclusion (see <www.institutesi.org> accessed 7 October 2020) and
GLOBALCIT - an observatory within the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute in Florence (see <globalcit.eu> accessed 7 October 2020).