Legal briefing: Statelessness and the right to respect for private and family life October 2024 In this section, the briefing will reflect thematically on the jurisprudence of the ECtHR and CJEU on the right to respect for private and family life. While this section will compare and contrast such jurisprudence, it is important to emphasise that these are two distinct bodies operating within separate legal frameworks. The ECtHR is the international Court of the Council of Europe and interprets the ECHR, applicable to State Parties to the ECHR. By contrast, the CJEU interprets EU law, applicable to Member States of the European Union. Each Court may at its own discretion refer to one another’s jurisprudence. 2.1. Protection of stateless persons and routes to regularisation Many States lack effective national frameworks to put commitments under international human rights law to protect stateless persons into practice. It is important to distinguish between the solutions required to address in situ statelessness (impacting people who are stateless in their own country) and statelessness in a migratory context. States should resolve in situ statelessness by confirming or granting nationality to those who lack it, and work to identify and eliminate discriminatory laws, policies, and practices that perpetuate intergenerational (risks of) statelessness affecting minoritised and marginalised populations.58 For stateless migrants or refugees, States should ensure procedures and mechanisms are in place to identify and determine who on their territory is stateless, to formally determine their statelessness, and to grant them adequate protection and rights in accordance with international human rights law. States must ensure that stateless persons on their territory have access to juridical rights, the right to work, economic and social rights including housing, education and social security, freedom of movement, identity and travel documents, and protection from expulsion. As States cannot meet these obligations towards stateless persons without a mechanism to identify who on their territory is stateless, the obligation to identify and determine statelessness is implicit in the 1954 Convention.59 In line with UNHCR guidelines, the determination of statelessness is best fulfilled through a dedicated statelessness determination procedure (SDP) that is fair, efficient, and easily accessible.60 58 UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, 30 June 2014, paragraph 37; ENS, Statelessness Determination and Protection in Europe, September 2021. 59 UNHCR, Statelessness Determination Procedures and the Status of Stateless Persons (“Geneva Conclusions”) (2010); Gyulai, G. ‘The determination of statelessness and the establishment of a statelessness-specific protection regime’, in Edwards, A. & Waas, L. (eds) Nationality and Statelessness under International Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2014), pp. 116-117. This obligation has been reiterated by UNHCR, the UN Human Rights Committee, and the European Court of Human Rights has also noted that Contracting States have an obligation to provide an effective and accessible procedure enabling the applicant to have the issue of their status determined with due regard to their privatelife interests under Article 8 ECHR (see below). 60 UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, 30 June 2014, pp. 25-44. 13