1. INTRODUCTION
IN THE WORLD TODAY, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE STATELESS, and an
estimated 1.1 billion1 lack legal identity documentation. Without state
acknowledgement of their existence and legal status, these individuals
are often denied access to basic rights such as education, healthcare,
freedom of movement, and access to justice. Stateless people lack
critically important state protection.
Statelessness can result from discriminatory laws or gaps in laws. It
disproportionately impacts racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and other
minority groups, and can stem from arbitrary application of laws that are
otherwise reasonable, weak civil registration or documentation systems,
administrative and practical barriers, or a combination of these. In addition
to people who are strictly stateless as a matter of law, there are people
who experience situations very much like statelessness because they are
of undetermined nationality or lack legal identity documentation, which
may render it difficult or impossible to prove their nationality. These
individuals are also often at risk of becoming legally stateless.
Living undocumented, under-documented, stateless, or without effective
citizenship prevents millions from reaching their full human potential
because of a lack of access to healthcare, education, and other rights
and services. It can marginalize entire communities, fueling discontent
and even conflict and displacement. It exacerbates poverty because it
confines individuals to the informal economy, often exposing them to
unfair or exploitative working conditions, and obscuring their needs
and activities from official accountings of the state. A growing body of
research also confirms a positive link between access to documentation
of legal status and actually enjoying the rights and services that one is
already entitled to as a matter of law.
A number of campaigns as well as global, regional, and sub-regional
initiatives focus on addressing statelessness, achieving equal nationality
rights for all, and enhancing human rights in the context of human
mobility. They include UNHCR’s #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness
by 2024 and its Global Action Plan to End Statelessness: 2014–2024,
the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, the World Bank’s
“ID4D” platform, the 2014 Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action, the
2015 Abidjan Declaration of Ministers of ECOWAS Member States
on Eradication of Statelessness and the Banjul Action Plan, the 2017
Declaration of International Conference on the Great Lakes Region
(ICGLR) Member States on the Eradication of Statelessness and
associated Action Plan, the 2018 League of Arab States Ministerial
Declaration on Belonging and Legal Identity, the Africa Programme
on Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics,
the Regional Strategic Plan for the Improvement of Civil Registration
and Vital Statistics in Asia and the Pacific, and the 2015 EU Council
1.
RELATED RESOURCE
Open Society Justice Initiative,
Legal Identity in the 2030Agenda
for Sustainable Development:
Lessons from Kibera, Kenya.
World Bank, Identification for Development (ID4D) Programme.
A C O M M U N I T Y- B A S E D P R A C T I T I O N E R ’ S G U I D E : D O C U M E N T I N G C I T I Z E N S H I P A N D OT H E R F O R M S O F L E G A L I D E N T I T Y
|
9