STATELESSNESS AND COVID-19: AN INTRODUCTION JAMIE LIEW * Throughout the past year and a half, we have witnessed how no person or community on this planet has been untouched by COVID-19. There are countless reports about the differential experiences that various communities face in access to healthcare but also how some public health measures meant to stem its spread may actually be harming particular persons. The pandemic has put into sharp focus the inequities and the gaping fractures in societies all over the world. Moreover, the pandemic has made many realise that we cannot ignore the marginalised in our community given the interconnectedness of our existence. This issue’s critique and commentary part presents a snapshot of how some stateless persons are coping during the pandemic but also features the work of grassroots organisations and emerging researchers. We take a look at five stateless communities: the Rohingya in Bangladesh; 1 LGBTQ+ undocumented in Brazil; 2 those seeking reproductive healthcare in Canada; 3 the Bidoon in Kuwait; 4 and the stateless in Sabah, Malaysia. 5 These five featured pieces are grounded in the experiences of the stateless, undocumented and those at risk of statelessness. Each writer is either from that community or has work and/or research embedded in the community they are writing about. While the pieces reveal the situation in a particular locale, there are some common threads. First, while we in developed nations have our movements restricted, are learning or teaching online, trying to assess whether one is able to work and wonder when we will be able to access vaccinations, stateless and undocumented persons are experiencing these public health concerns in a more troubling way. For example, Yuriko Cowper-Smith and Saifullah Muhammad write in relation to Rohingya stateless persons in refugee camps, that domestic and sexual violence is on the rise, that girls are not being educated and are at greater risk of being forced into marriage. 6 In Kuwait, Areej Alshammiry describes barriers to online learning * 1 2 3 4 5 6 Director, Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies, University of Ottawa (Canada). Yuriko Cowper-Smith with Saifullah Muhammad, ‘COVID-19 in Cox’s Bazar: Pandemic Narratives From the World’s Largest Refugee Camp’ (2021) 3(1) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 148. Yvonne Su, Tyler Valiquette and Yuriko Cowper-Smith, ‘Surviving Overlapping Precarity in a “Gigantic Hellhole”: A Case Study of Venezuelan LGBTQI+ Asylum Seekers and Undocumented Migrants in Brazil Amid COVID-19’ (2021) 3(1) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 155. Frédérique Chabot, ‘Access to Abortion for Undocumented Persons during the COVID-19 Pandemic’ (2021) 3(1) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 142. Areej Alshammiry, ‘COVID-19 and the Bidoon in Kuwait: Pandemic or Statelessness Vulnerabilities?’ (2021) 3(1) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 123. Mary Anne Baltazar and Amanda R Cheong, ‘Reaching Stateless, Undocumented and Migrant Communities During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons from the Grassroots Humanitarian Effort in Sabah, Malaysia’ (2021) 3(1) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 131. Cowper-Smith and Muhammed (n 1) 149.