ANNUAL REPORT 2016 1 1 MESSAGE FROM OUR DIRECTOR Among the unprecedented numbers of displaced men, women and children arriving in Europe today, there are growing numbers of stateless people. Although often overlooked, this is not surprising when you consider that statelessness is both a cause and a consequence of forced displacement. This creates both challenges and opportunities. There is understandably broader concern that rising populism and fear of ‘the Other’ risk exacerbating a crisis of politics which renders governments unable, if not already unwilling, to adequately respond to the current situation. But equally there is now a real opportunity to pinpoint gaps and corresponding policy solutions necessary to address the specific situation of stateless persons, where there exists more political space in which to operate. One such forum which we have successfully influenced is the recently launched European Migration Network’s Statelessness Platform – mandated by the European Council to work with the European Commission to identify and share good practice among Member States regarding the identification of stateless persons. We will continue to work closely with UNHCR and other partners to support this initiative. During 2016 Bulgaria, Greece and the Netherlands all introduced, or made progress with developing, statelessness determination procedures – advocating for which has been a major priority for us since launching our Network. Such progress is welcome, although at the same time, significant flaws in the design of all these new procedures highlight the need for continuing vigilance in our efforts to monitor developments, and to facilitate training and sharing of expertise among a wide spectrum of stakeholders. In 2017 we will bolster our capacity to do this by rolling out the pilot implementation of a comparative database on statelessness in Europe, which will build on our efforts to date. As described in this report, our work to research, advocate, campaign and share expertise has achieved significant further progress this year – in particular to successfully shine a spotlight on the problem of childhood statelessness, and to get this issue higher up the agenda of the European Union and other key institutions. This year has been a reminder of the value of collaboration, among our members, our partners, and across sectors. The platform provided by our #StatelessKids campaign has enabled us to successfully mobilize a new constituency of supporters, most notably to engage youth with our work. This helped us to garner over 22,000 signatures for our online petition calling on European leaders to take action. Highlighting the human impact of statelessness through the gathering of individual testimonies also remains at the heart of all our work. Embedded storytelling enables us to engage new audiences and to elevate conversations with policy-makers to achieve change. It also inspires and motivates us to re-double our efforts. In 2017 this will include a strong focus on protecting stateless persons from arbitrary detention, the centrepiece for which will be a major conference in May where we will launch a new flagship report setting out an agenda for change and providing a platform for region-wide advocacy on this issue. We will also work on several collaborative projects – for example to more fully understanding the impact of statelessness on Roma communities, and to seek to initiate research allowing us to better analyse and address the interaction between statelessness and the refugee crisis. In all our efforts, we will be emboldened by being able to rely on our recently expanded Secretariat, the active contribution of our growing membership and the increased engagement by our widening supporter base. Thank you for your ongoing support, CHRIS NASH, DIRECTOR