Good practices in nationality laws for the prevention of childhood statelessness identity documents, the people could regularize their status in Montenegro and access health care, education and employment.91 This also offered a pathway to citizenship after continuous legal residence for 10 years.92 Montenegro has, more recently, taken additional steps to address Roma and Egyptians at risk of statelessness, including the adoption of a Strategy for the Social Inclusion of Roma and Egyptians 2021-202593 and a Strategy on the Migration and Reintegration of Returnees in Montenegro 2021-2025.94 The impact of safeguards against childhood statelessness The measures undertaken in Montenegro have allowed at-risk communities to register their births and regulate their legal status in Montenegro. For those who have benefited, this is transformative. Solutions in Montenegro for families from Kosovo Sabaheta and Bujar Elsani and their six children are a Roma family who have lived in Montenegro for many years. Due to the armed conflict in Kosovo in the late 1990s, Sabaheta and Bujar fled from Kosovo to Montenegro with their eldest child. They had no identity documents except for their daughter’s birth certificate. They had five more children, all born in Montenegro, who received Montenegrin birth certificates, but the family could not obtain any other form of documentation, which left them disadvantaged in many ways. They were stuck between a requirement that they return to Kosovo to obtain documents and being unable to enter Kosovo lawfully without documents. After the authorities agreed on a procedure for the late birth registration of Kosovans in Montenegro in 2011, mobile teams from Kosovo travelled around Montenegro to find and register people from Kosovo and their children, whose births had not been registered in Kosovo. Approximately 1,000 people, including the Elsani family, were assisted through this project, with most 91 92 93 94 40 An end to two decades of uncertainty for the Elsani family and over 1,000 others in Montenegro, UNHCR, (no date). Law on Montenegrin Citizenship, Art. 8. Strategy for Social Inclusion of Roma and Egyptians 2021-2025, Montenegro Ministry of Justice, Human and Minority Rights, September 2021. Strategy on the Migration and Reintegration of Returnees in Montenegro 2021-2025, September 2021, Submission to inform the European Commission 2024 Enlargement Package: Progress towards addressing statelessness in enlargement countries, ENS, 24 April 2024, p. 9.