This equates to an average reduction of 20,000 persons per year. Half a million people remained stateless in the region at the end of 2018. Table 2: Statelessness in the successor states of the USSR (according to UNHCR Global Trends data 2014-2018) Country End 2014 End 2015 End 2016 End 2017 End 2018 Azerbaijan 3585 3585 3585 3585 3585 Armenia 206 311 512 773 848 Belarus 6440 5635 6182 6007 6025 Estonia 88076 85301 82585 80314 77877 Georgia 770 627 580 578 566 Kazakhstan 7038 7909 8451 8138 7690 Kyrgyzstan 12133 9118 2334 855 548 Latvia 262802 225195 242736 233571 224844 Lithuania 3645 3466 3466 3193 3039 Moldova 2036 5014 4776 4569 4451 113474 101813 90771 82148 75679 Tajikistan 1364 19469 17002 10500 4616 Turkmenistan 7511 7125 5744 3851 4714 Ukraine 35335 35228 35363 35294 35650 Uzbekistan 86703 86703 86524 85555 79942 Total 631118 596499 590611 558931 530074 Russian Federation What is not shown in the data? The global statelessness statistics do not present a complete picture of the state of statelessness in the world today. Here are three further reflections on the data, but from the perspective of what it is not able to show: ▪ Persistent asterisks An asterisk appears in the global statistical reporting for 22 countries in 2018, as listed in the boxed text on the right. For a number of these countries, a footnote points to an ongoing data collection exercise – including for both the Dominican Republic and Zimbabwe which previously reported figures18 and featured at that time in the list of the ten countries with the largest number of stateless people. The figures reported for both of these countries were removed from Afghanistan Bhutan China China, Hong Kong SAR Dem. Rep. of the Congo Dominican Republic Eritrea Ethiopia India Indonesia Lebanon Liberia Libya Madagascar Nepal Pakistan South Africa Sri Lanka United Arab Emirates USA Venezuela Zimbabwe 13,000 to zero in just five years”. UNHCR, Kyrgyzstan ends statelessness in historic first, 4 July 2019, https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2019/7/5d1da90d4/kyrgyzstan-ends-statelessness-historic-first.html. 18 In UNHCR’s 2015 Global Trends, the stateless population reported in the Dominican Republic was 133,770, and in Zimbabwe the figure reported was 300,000; available at: https://www.unhcr.org/uk/statistics/unhcrstats/576408cd7/unhcr-global-trends-2015.html. 6