COVID-19 IMPACTS ON IMMIGRATION DETENTION: GLOBAL RESPONSES LEFT IN LIMBO? EUROPE’S STATELESS POPULATIONS IN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC Stateless people we work with often tell us they feel ‘invisible’, like they don’t exist. Angela from Azerbaijan, who was detained in the Netherlands after being refused asylum and then released into limbo, said, “the documents I do have tell me I’m of ‘unknown nationality’. Officially I still don’t exist”. Or Farid, from Pakistan, detained in Poland, who said: “The waiting is the worst part… it’s like you don’t have any control any more… you wait for someone else to tell you who you are and what your country is”. Working in this area, we repeatedly find that statelessness is ignored, misunderstood, and left out of law and policy frameworks, denying stateless people basic rights and services. These legal, policy and practice gaps can put stateless people at particular risk of immigration detention. With no legal route to protection, a residence permit, or nationality where they live, and no other country to which they can go, stateless people can find themselves stuck in legal limbo. In 2017, the work of our members across Europe helped shine a light on the stories of many of these men, women, and children like Angela and Farid, who are left locked in limbo through no fault of their own.1 Across Europe, there are more than half a million people living with no nationality, with no recourse to the rights and protections that being a citizen of somewhere confers. They are members of minority groups, refugees, migrants, individuals with hopes, dreams, and aspirations just like everyone else. Some have moved across borders; some have always lived in the same place while borders have moved around them. Some fall victim to gaps or conflicts in nationality laws, and some to deliberate policies of deprivation or denial of nationality. Stateless people and people at risk of statelessness in Europe have many and different aspects to their identities, but all lack a State to turn to in times of crisis. When European governments started to impose varying degrees of lockdowns and states of emergency as COVID-19 cases rose dramatically in spring 2020, ENS reached out to our members to find out how the pandemic was impacting on their work and the stateless people they work with. 2 In May, we organised a series of online conversations with stateless activists and representatives of affected communities across Europe to hear how the pandemic was impacting on them and what responses they wanted to see. These discussions were worked up into a position paper, 3 providing a starting point for the views and experiences of people affected by statelessness to be prioritised and reflected in decision-making during COID-19 and beyond. We continue to work with this group and our wider membership to monitor the fast-moving regional picture as we learn more every day about how responses to the pandemic are affecting stateless people across the region. Our members (over 150 civil society organisations and individual experts in 41 European countries), have had to adapt fast to be able to continue to provide vital services, juggling working virtually with the need to reach the most marginalised populations who may have limited access to internet or phones. They have faced the closure of competent authorities, procedural delays, disruption of court cases, and a reduction in access to the people they support in detention and reception centres. They have also faced an impact on their own funds and future fundraising opportunities, as well as difficulty getting traction on advocacy goals or media attention on statelessness related issues. 1 2 3 4 At the height of the pandemic in Europe, stateless activists and advocates told us that COVID-19 was having a specific social, economic, and health impact on them and their communities. Even amidst a public health crisis, they told us stateless people continued to face barriers to accessing healthcare, an increase in homelessness, and loss of income. Access to aid packages is reliant on identification documents in some countries, access to education during lockdowns is reliant on parents having the language and IT literacy to support their children. Immigration and court procedures faced significant delays in many countries, and access to lifeline legal advice and support was limited. Information on COVID-19 measures and impacts was not always translated or accessible to stateless people. Romani activists in particular reported an increase in antigypsyism, institutional discrimination, racial profiling and racist attacks, as well as the impact of increased police powers in some countries being to heighten the risk of people being detained or sanctioned for having irregular residence status or lacking identification documents. Concerns about the state response towards people at risk of or held in immigration detention during the COVID-19 lockdowns were raised by our members in the UK, Sweden, Poland, Malta, France, Bulgaria, and Belgium, among others. They condemned the conditions inside places of detention during the pandemic, the lack of adequate healthcare and personal protective equipment, instances of the use of solitary confinement as a COVID-19 ‘prevention’ mechanism, as well as the lack of access to legal advice, support services and visits. In the UK, Sweden, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Spain, it was reported that at least some people were released from detention due to COVID-19 measures, but in some cases our members said people were then not provided with adequate support and accommodation, leaving them at risk of destitution and homelessness. Nonetheless, our members also reported some positive developments. As well as releasing people from detention, some other encouraging State practices were highlighted, including countries that extended residence permits or made it policy to take no punitive action against people whose permits expired during the lockdown period (e.g. Ukraine, Portugal, Poland). Members in Portugal, BosniaHerzegovina, Albania, Ireland, Malta, and Serbia, all reported that governments had explicitly increased rights to access public services (in some cases only COVID-related services) for stateless or undocumented people. In Ireland and Belgium, a firewall to prevent health services from sharing information with immigration authorities was introduced to facilitate access to healthcare. The pandemic has exposed the urgent need for European States to put in place comprehensive legal and policy frameworks to protect and operationalise the rights of stateless people. It has also exposed gaps in knowledge and a need for more participatory research to understand how stateless people are being impacted, including those affected by immigration enforcement and detention policies.4 Whether States are willing to recognise it or not, stateless people exist, they are here in Europe, and they are calling for their rights to be upheld, and to be involved in the development of responses to COVID-19. At the same time, a handful of States have demonstrated that https://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www.statelessness.eu/files/ENS_detention_Testimonies.pdf https://www.statelessness.eu/about-us/members https://www.statelessness.eu/resources/even-pandemic-statelessness-has-been-invisible-involving-stateless-people-europe-s-covid With the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, ENS is currently carrying out a scoping study to improve understanding of the nexus between health rights and statelessness to be published in early 2021 idcoalition.org | westernsydney.edu.au/hadri 19