information, than the statistics themselves. People working on statistics, concerned with how accurately to record nationality and the terms to use, can cause stateless people to disappear or bring them into view. The UN Statistics Division is currently reviewing the 1998 International Recommendations on Migration Statistics. In two of the working groups (those on concepts and on definitions) the question of statelessness and the need for better data on several variables has been discussed. There is little statistical information at Council of Europe level and that which exists at EU level is not fine-grained. Collection of data is always shaped by political considerations: States that recognise Palestine insist on Palestinians being recorded as a category separate from statelessness in the EU statistics, which risks masking the statelessness of Palestinians when non-experts interrogate the statistics (although it provides a helpful breakdown to experts). Longitudinal, cohort data is scant, and it is not possible to use statistical sources to identify where stateless children have acquired a nationality, save in the case of large-scale recognitions or registrations. The 2020 UN update on budgets and funding does record where significant numbers of stateless persons have been identified and it is possible to correlate this against what is known about refugee populations and nationality laws in those countries. This is easiest for EU Member States where the statistics on first-time asylum applicants by nationality for 2019 and the first quarter of 2020 are available. The data is imperfect, but it provides information that can usefully be explored by those considering research in a particular country. Even at a headline level, when combined with qualitative information, statistics may help identify potential issues for further research. For example, it is known that in Colombia and Venezuela, the births of children born outside the territory must be registered with the competent national authority for the parent to transmit nationality to the child. In mid2019, the UN Update on budgets and funding records 23,462 refugees in Spain and 3,567 stateless persons. This reveals Spain as a country with a sizeable refugee population and with the capacity to identify and record statelessness. The EU statistics on claims for asylum for mid-2020 reveal: Spain Venezuela 40 305 Colombia 28 880 Honduras 6 730 Nicaragua 5 840 El Salvador 4 715 6