Briefing Note: Addressing Statelessness in Europe October 2019 The European Network on Statelessnessi (ENS) is a civil society alliance with over 145 organisational and individual members in 41 countries, working to end statelessness and ensure that stateless people in Europe are protected and access their human rights. This briefing has been prepared ahead of the UNHCR High-Level Segment on Statelessness (HLS) on 7 October 2019. Introduction To be stateless is to not be recognised as a citizen by any state. It is a legal anomaly that prevents people from accessing fundamental civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights. This can mean, for example, that children cannot go to school, women cannot access maternity care, young people are barred from continuing their studies through higher education, and parents are left unable to support their families. Statelessness affects more than 10 million people around the world and over half a million in Europe. Statelessness occurs in Europe both among recent migrants and refugees, and people who have lived in the same place for generations, such as many Romani people who remain at risk of statelessness, including due to widespread antigypsyism. While these numbers give an indication of the scale of statelessness in the region, data is sparse and often incomplete. Statelessness remains, therefore, a largely hidden phenomenon. This is particularly so in a migratory context where most European countries frequently encounter stateless people in their asylum systems, making this an issue that lawmakers – as well as officials implementing the response to people seeking protection on the ground – must seek to better understand and address. Understanding and addressing statelessness in a migratory context Among the stateless people living in Europe today are individuals who arrived seeking international protectionii and were either stateless prior to leaving their country of origin or have since become stateless.iii Of the four million people who applied for asylum in the EU in 2015-2018, almost 100,000 were recorded as ‘stateless’ or as having ‘unknown nationality’. In 2017, over 2,000 children who applied for asylum in Europe were registered as ‘stateless’, down from 6,000 in 2015. Many more refugees come from countries (such as Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Eritrea, Sudan, Bahrain, or Turkey) where discrimination in nationality laws, state succession or deprivation of citizenship practices mean that they or their children may be at risk of statelessness. The fact that an asylum applicant may be stateless is often critical when assessing their claim for international protection. Whether someone is stateless or a national of their country of origin not only impacts on the decision-making process, but also on the nationality rights of their children, and access to procedures such as family reunion or naturalisation (as well as the possibility of return) because they are unlikely to have documentary proof of their identity and family links. Stateless people (like refugees) are due specific rights under international law and risk discrimination if their statelessness is not identified and acted upon. Despite near universal ratification of relevant international instruments, such as the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons (which provides a set of rights for stateless people in a migratory context), there continues to exist a gap between this international framework and awareness of and respect for these rights in practice. Stateless people often face years of uncertainty,iv destitution, and repeated, lengthy immigration detention.v Yet the solution to address these problems is relatively simple and can be achieved through the establishment of improved mechanisms for identifying stateless people encountered by the authorities, and dedicated statelessness determination procedures that are fair, efficient and easily accessible. This would enable states to identify and determine who is stateless on their territory and grant them protection, thereby both fulfilling their obligations under international law and providing a sustainable solution for individuals who cannot be removed. Yet currently only a handful of European countries have these procedures in place.vi