THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA MONTENEGRO “I will be able to officially recognize and register my children. I will be able to be employed and have social security. I will be able to get a passport and travel… All roads will be open for me.” Sutki, 29, fYR Macedonia “I FELT SOMEWHAT LOST ALL MY LIFE… WAS BORN HERE, MY ANCESTORS ARE FROM HERE…I OFTEN ASKED MYSELF HOW COME I CANNOT REGISTER IN MY OWN COUNTRY. “ JANOŠ, 27, MONTENEGRO In Montenegro, the vast majority of those at risk of statelessness are part of the Roma or Egyptian communities, usually displaced from Kosovo. SUTKI, 29, fYR MACEDONIA Sutki’s name does not appear on his daughter’s birth certificate. He did this on purpose, afraid of passing his struggles of statelessness onto his first child. Sutki was born in Skopje to a stateless mother, with the ‘citizenship’ box on his birth certificate left blank. Rejected by both his parents, Sutki lived with his grandmother until he was nine years old. When his grandmother remarried, Sutki was no longer welcome in her home and spent the rest of his childhood in an orphanage. He spent his adolescent years bouncing between the streets and various homeless shelters. Without citizenship, Sutki is only eligible for documents that identify him as a ‘foreigner.’ The ID card he gets expires every year, and with it, each employment contract. With the help of UNHCR and its partner MYLA, however, Sutki is on track to obtaining fYR Macedonian citizenship. After nine years together, Sutki and his wife, a fYR Macedonian citizen, were finally able to get married this year. He is now able to benefit from his wife’s health insurance, and, after three years of marriage, will meet the conditions to become a citizen. Sutki and his wife, who are expecting another child, are now able to be optimistic about the future, one in which Sutki will no longer have to fear that his children are not recognized as his own. 20 • ENDING STATELESSNESS IN SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE Montenegro is a party to both UN and Council of Europe conventions in the area of statelessness, and as such it recently adopted a mechanism for the identification and registration of stateless persons. In February 2018, Montenegro adopted the Law on Foreigners which provided specific provisions stipulating Statelessness Determination Procedure (SDP) and the provisions regulating the lawful stay of the stateless persons. UNHCR welcomed the fact that Montenegro remains firm in meeting its commitments under the 1954 Convention. The Government established a working group that is currently working on the adoption of the bylaws. UNHCR is a member of the working group. In 2014, the Ministry of the Interior and UNHCR issued a call in 2014 for those people living in Montenegro without citizenship, with 486 responses to the call. UNHCR facilitated cooperation between the interior ministries of Montenegro and Kosovo, whose mobile teams visited Montenegro 16 times providing some 1,200 persons at risk of statelessness and displaced people from Kosovo with vital documents for their integration in Montenegro, and for many of them to prevent or respond to possible cases of statelessness. This tangible success was the result of the continuous cooperation between the authorities of Montenegro and Kosovo, and UNHCR, which led to a significant reduction of the number of stateless persons in the country. In November 2017, the authorities and UNHCR carried out a joint field verification, covering over 2,300 persons, to ascertain those with pending status issues and other people with unresolved documentation issues that create obstacles ENDING STATELESSNESS IN SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE • 21