LESSONS LEARNT “ Most stateless situations globally affect minorities. Statelessness and exclusion from rights and services are one of the worse deprivations they face and there is usually a sense of apprehension about the future among stateless people. Any project interventions should not just address immediate issues, but also long term needs of strengthening community mobilisation, training to address the fear and apprehension stateless people suffer”. Development and Justice Initiative, CESF Consortium Member UNDERSTANDING THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION AND STATELESSNESS Sometimes, it takes an unprecedented crisis to give clarity to what was hidden in plain sight. For many years, the lived experience of stateless people, academic scholarship and advocacy initiatives alike, point clearly to a strong nexus between discrimination and statelessness. Discrimination causes and perpetuates statelessness, and stateless persons are subject to more discrimination in a vicious cycle. As the effects of COVID-19 came into view, the Impact Report published in June 2020 articulated the discriminatory exclusion of stateless and undocumented people from COVID-19 relief and healthcare measures, the increased indirect impacts of gender discriminatory nationality laws during the pandemic and how the pandemic was being leveraged to scapegoat minority groups who are also affected by statelessness, such as the Roma or the Rohingya. These findings were reconfirmed in the Together We Can Report published by the CESF Consortium in July 2021. Why does discrimination lead to statelessness and why are stateless people discriminated against? The answer often lies in the self-perpetuating cycle of exclusion and marginalisation that emerges through statelessness. When people are denied their right to nationality and made stateless, their equal capacity to participate in politics and democracy is violently wrenched from them. They are viewed as ‘other’ and treated as ‘less’, all justified based on their non-citizenship. The deprivation of citizenship is thus a powerful political tool of exclusion, built on the logic of differentiation between those who do and don’t belong. So, the same structures that perpetuate statelessness, also perpetuate the marginalisation and discrimination of the stateless. Stateless people experience both the indifference and the power or even violence of the state, at greater intensity than most citizens. In this context, the exclusion and targeted marginalisation of the stateless in COVID-19 responses was not surprising. It was characteristic of how the stateless have always been treated. The infographic captures this understanding of statelessness as a structural problem caused and perpetuated by discrimination and the deprivation of the right to nationality, and resultant consequences on other human rights, democracy and the rule of law. 1 RIGHT TO A NATIONALITY 2 STATELESSNESS FREEDOM FROM DISCRIMINATION A STRUCTURAL PROBLEM Nationality denial as a result of discrimination • • • • Discrimination against stateless people women minorities migrants disabled persons Central to denial of other rights, exacerbated by: COVID-19 NATIONALS PRIORITISED FOR RELIEF Largest cause of statelessness IMPACT ON THE STATELESS DEEPENS STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION • • • TARGETED FOR EXCLUSION & INSTITUTIONAL BLINDNESS FURTHER WIDENING DISPARITIES & FURTHER ENTRENCHING MARGINALISATION 3 4 RIGHTS TO HEALTHCARE • • • • emergency health care hygiene & sanitation vaccinations information • • • • OTHER SOCIOECONOMIC RIGHTS work - denied livelihoods schoold - denied education social security - denied relief standard of living - entrenched poverty 26 5 • • • • CIVIL & POLITICAL RIGHTS movement - seperated by borders liberty - detained expression - silenced assembley - denied denied documents hate speech intergenerational impact