be secure. In each of the four States, property rights are justiciable in the national courts, although Turkmen property law is not always clear on this point.480 In meetings with UNHCR throughout the region, stateless persons with official Stateless Person’s Cards reported no significant problems with their rights to own property. Stateless individuals in mixed marriages attending meetings with UNHCR said they lived in houses or flats, whose formal ownership belonged to their national spouse. Stateless persons without a national partner, who themselves had not been officially documented as a stateless person, have experienced difficulties with property in the four States. According to the surveys carried out in Kyrgyzstan by UNHCR’s NGO partners, ethnic Tajiks who had settled temporarily in Batken region in the 1990s lost the homes they had bought without valid sale and purchase documents. Once a simplified procedure for acquiring Kyrgyz citizenship was concluded between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in June 2002, they were able to legalise their house purchases retroactively and the homes were returned to them.481 In Tajikistan, there is no property provision for temporary residents.482 Stateless persons in Dushanbe without official registration as ‘stateless persons’ told UNHCR that they are unable to conclude a contract, for example, to buy a house or a car. In their case, their anomalous situation had lasted between 10 and 15 years, which made their lives very difficult. One had entrusted a Tajik national to buy a property on his behalf. He said he was cheated and then had been unable to bring a case through the civil courts. In Kazakhstan, temporary residents – such as undocumented stateless persons – can exercise property rights, on a basis set down in national law. Temporary residents who are tenants can be evicted at seven days’ notice without compensation, and those who sub-let a property risk summary eviction, because the end of a let automatically ends a sub-let.483 In Turkmenistan, stateless persons from near Ashgabat, holding a 1974 USSR passport, told UNHCR they were unable to buy a home because they lacked valid identification documents. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan give some specific property rights to members of their titular ethnic group returning to settle in the country. Indigenous Kazakhs – Oralmany – have accelerated access to municipal housing for rent if they have judicial proof that they were once victims of political repression.484 When they have acquired Kazakh citizenship they can buy property from the State housing sector, as a social category protected in law.485 They are restricted to buying one property.486 Ethnic Kyrgyz returning to Kyrgyzstan – Kairylmans – receive a plot of land from the Migration Service, a grant, and permission to build a house once they have acquired citizenship. They are also able to transfer property from their previous residence, tax-free, for their own personal use. According to the Ministry of Labor, Employment and Migration of Kyrgyzstan, since 1991, 22,000 Kairylmans from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have received citizenship and a plot of land.487 480 Article 19, 1993 Property Law of Turkmenistan says that the provisions of the law “do not apply to the rights of foreigners and stateless persons to land”. Article 25(4) gives property holders who are not the owners of a particular piece of property the right to defend their rights against the owner. Article 26 requires a court order for the expropriation of someone’s property, only if they object to the expropriation. The law envisages 11 situations in which expropriation of property might be carried out lawfully or unlawfully. 481 2004 Regulation ‘On Simplified Procedures for Acquiring Kyrgyz Citizenship by Tajik Citizens’. This was reported in the survey on statelessness in southern Kyrgyzstan, see UN High Commissioner for Refugees, A Place to Call Home. The Situation of Stateless persons in the Kyrgyz Republic: Findings of Surveys Commissioned by the UNHCR, UNHCR Bishkek, 2009, page 24. 482 Article 11, 1997 Law No 500 ‘On the Legal Status of Foreigners’ in Tajikistan, as amended in 2009. 483 Article 26 and 27, 1997 Law No 94-I ‘On Housing Relations’ in Kazakhstan. 484 Ibid, Article 118(8). 485 Ibid, Article 68(7). 486 Ibid, Article 70. 487 In an interview with UNHCR. A further 3,000 Kairylmans who had immigrated to Kyrgyzstan since 1991 were going through citizenship procedures in 2009. ~ 71 ~