Legal briefing: Statelessness and the right to respect for private and family life October 2024 Stateless people are often disproportionately impacted in their enjoyment of private and family life, due to the obstacles that statelessness imposes in their lives. While the right to a nationality is not explicitly guaranteed in the ECHR and EU law, the ECtHR and the CJEU have both recognised the importance of nationality in fulfilling the right to respect for private and family life, and have found on several instances statelessness issues may engage the right to respect for private and family life. They have developed their case law in a number of areas, including regularisation of status, acquisition, denial, and deprivation of nationality, birth registration, and deprivation of liberty. Moreover, they built on the significance of nationality as an element of personal identity, and acknowledged the impact of recognising legal parentage and proof thereof, for children to be able to have a family life with their parents. This briefing has analysed some of the positive jurisprudential developments as well as areas where there is potential for courts and litigators to advance the right for respect for private and family life in the context of statelessness and nationality issues. While regional case law is promising, there is scope for courts to further develop States’ obligations under the ECHR and the CFR. For example, the ECtHR could note the importance of establishing dedicated statelessness determination procedures to allow States to identify stateless people in their territory and provide them routes to regularisation. With regards to detention, jurisprudence could note that statelessness is a juridically relevant fact in detention and removal decisions when there is no reasonable prospect of removal, and that statelessness may lead to arbitrary detention if not adequately identified. Domestically, some national courts made reference to the right to respect for private and family life when applying national law in the context of statelessness. For example, some found that the absence of routes of regularisation for stateless people, or obstacles in accessing existing routes, constitutes an interference with their right to respect for private and family life. However, there is limited jurisprudence available at national level on the application of the right to respect for private and family life in the context of statelessness and nationality, and domestic courts do not consistently apply provisions of the ECHR or the CFR in these cases. 44