UNHCR STATISTICS TECHNICAL SERIES: 2019/1 UNHCR Statistical Reporting on Statelessness Contributed by: Lily Chen, Petra Nahmias, Sebastian Steinmueller A stateless person is someone who is not considered a national of any State under the operation of its law.1 The problem of statelessness constitutes a sociolegal gap depriving several million people worldwide from full enjoyment of human rights and civic participation.2 Resultant exclusion not only impairs individual human dignity, but socioeconomic development and the whole of society. UNHCR has a mandate to identify and protect stateless persons, and to prevent and resolve situations of statelessness. These processes are interlinked because enhanced identification of cases is necessary for informing the development of legislative safeguards and nationality procedures, and monitoring their implementation. In 2014, the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness: 2014 – 20243 was developed in consultation with States, civil society, and international organizations to provide a guiding framework for ending statelessness by 2024. This paper focuses on existing needs and progress pursuant to Action 10: improving quantitative and qualitative data on stateless populations. Statelessness is challenging to measure because affected populations frequently reside precariously on the margins of society. The causes, profile and magnitude of statelessness also vary country-by-country. Despite increased awareness of statelessness globally, comprehensive statistics on all countries are not available, and existing data on statelessness remains poor. Fewer than half the countries in the world possess government data on stateless populations. The most populous countries with suspected stateless populations do not report on statelessness, among them China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria (together accounting for 42 per cent of the entire world population). Currently, UNHCR reports on 3.9 million stateless people but this is known to be an underestimate and a global figure of at least 10 million is used. However, this figure is not based on robust or transparent demographic methods and, as a result, its use to track progress on reducing statelessness and for policy, programming or advocacy purposes is limited. Although UNHCR has supported efforts to improve national and global estimates, more is required to capacitate member states and coordinate data collection to estimate the number of stateless persons within their territory. Presently, there is an increasing demand for comprehensive and consolidated guidelines on reporting standards, best practices and coordination as UNHCR country operations use differing and inconsistent methods to estimate stateless populations. These inconsistencies across countries and years, alongside gaps in data and conceptual ambiguities, create substantial challenges for the accuracy, reliability and interpretation of existing data on statelessness. Lack of proper documentation and metadata information in UNHCR’s database on stateless population exacerbates these issues. 1 Article 1(1) of the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. 2 Global Action Plan to End Statelessness: 2014-2024. https://www.refworld.org/docid/545b47d64.html 3 Ibid. 1 UNHCR / October, 2019