The ENS #RomaBelong campaign has been instrumental in mainstreaming the issue of Roma statelessness at the EU level. By bringing together a wide range of stakeholders the campaign has helped pave the way for positive action and has increased attention on the issue within EU enlargement negotiations. 7 1 A CATALYST FOR ACTION: WORKING TO ADDRESS STATELESSNESSSet IN up EUROPE in 2016, the #RomaBelong project is a joint initiative by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI) and the European Network on Statelessness (ENS) to better understand and tackle Roma statelessness in the Western Balkans and Ukraine. Living without nationality and rights is a harsh reality for thousands of Roma in Europe, including children. Many are left struggling to obtain identification documents, attend school classes, access healthcare and later in their life find employment, own property, get married or register the birth of their own children. On 26 and 27 October ERRC, ISI and ENS organised a regional conference launching the #RomaBelong synthesis report and bringing together over 70 key stakeholders to discuss the findings and next steps for the project. The report was produced in collaboration with ENS members and partner organisations in Albania (Tirana Legal Aid Society), Bosnia-Herzegovina (Vaša Prava), Macedonia (Macedonian Young Lawyers Association), Montenegro (Mladi Romi), Serbia (Praxis) and Ukraine (Desyate Kvitnya) and looks at the role of discrimination, access to justice, marginalisation, and access to civil registration in creating and perpetuating a lack of documentation and risk of statelessness among Roma in the Western Balkans and Ukraine. SORAYA POST, CO-CHAIR OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ANTI-RACISM AND DIVERSITY INTERGROUP ENS also facilitated a half day workshop with organisations working in the region to map and plan local and regional advocacy to address the issues raised in the report. The discussions informed a regional advocacy plan, which ENS is currently implementing, as well as three national level plans developed in partnership with ENS members. ANNUAL REPORT 2017 1 9 In November, ENS and UNHCR organised an event in the European Parliament to focus the attention of European lawmakers on Roma statelessness and present the #RomaBelong synthesis research. The meeting attended by a cross party panel of Parliamentarians, the Commission and civil society representatives was the first step in setting out a clear agenda for addressing the issue as part of ENS’s regional strategy. Madrid, October 2018 – A training session for lawyers, NGO staff and government officials facilitated by ENS President, Gabor Gyulai, and Head of Policy & Research, Nina Murray BUILDING CAPACITY AND SHARING OUR EXPERTISE Images from left to right: Skopje, October 2017 – #RomaBelong report was launch at an event in Skopje and received wide media coverage, bringing much needed attention to the topic Brussels, November 2017 – Joint event in the European Parliament facilitated a discussion about relevant strategies and next steps to address the issue of Roma statelessness #LockedinLimbo is a significant statement, showing inter faith support for global efforts to contribute to ending statelessness and the arbitrary detention associated with it. Faith groups have an important role in calling for policy makers to prioritise the welfare of people who face marginalisation and exclusion. ROWAN WILLIAMS, FORMER ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY Images from left to right: Budapest, May 2017 – ENS #LockedinLimbo campaign was launched at a pan-European conference attended by 120 participants. The event set a future agenda to guide ongoing collective efforts to end detention of stateless people Strasbourg, October 2017 – ENS Director Chris Nash handing over the #LockedinLimbo statement to Members of the Parliamentary Assembly at the Council of Europe Across Europe a failure by states to put in place effective systems to identify stateless people leaves thousands exposed to repeated and prolonged detention. We believe it is of vital importance that stateless people are afforded respect for their fundamental rights, including liberty of the person. The ENS report “Protecting Stateless Persons from Arbitrary Detention: An Agenda for Change”, was also launched at the conference. The report argues that immigration systems do not have appropriate procedures in place to identify those who are left without a nationality and to protect stateless people. On 4 – 5 May ENS hosted a regional conference in Budapest with over 120 participants representing civil society, UN agencies, academia and governments, to discuss the law, policy and human implications of the immigration detention of stateless people. Following the conference in Budapest, ENS has been working hard to build further support for the campaign and to foster opportunities for advocacy. This has included attending a hearing before the Committee for Legal Cooperation of the Council of Europe to feed into the codification of standards for the administrative detention of migrants in Europe, meeting with key stakeholders in Berlin and Geneva at the Global Conference on Children’s Rights, and Annual UNHCR NGO Consultations, working with UNHCR to contribute language on statelessness to the ongoing review of the EU Returns Handbook, working with members to implement campaign activities nationally and collecting over 100 endorsements of our #LockedinLimbo Statement. At the conference, ENS launched its #LockedInLimbo campaign and a statement signed by NGOs, politicians, lawyers and academics from over 30 European countries. The statement highlights that the current use of immigration detention is unsustainable, harmful, and, in many cases, unlawful, and makes concrete recommendations to European governments on how to address the issue. #LOCKEDINLIMBO – WORKING WITH THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE TO END DETENTION OF STATELESS PEOPLE On 11 October, in partnership with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ENS organised a lunchtime event at the Council of Europe to present the #LockedinLimbo statement calling on European states to take action to end the detention of stateless people. New pledges of support for the campaign were made by key parliamentarians and Council of Europe representatives. Tomáš Bo ek, the Secretary General’s Special Representative on Refugees and Migrants, spoke at the event endorsing ENS’s campaign recommendations and committing to work on the issue. UK FAITH LEADERS CALL ON GOVERNMENT TO STOP DETENTION OF STATELESS PEOPLE ENS joined together with Scottish Faiths Action for Refugees and UK faith leaders during Interfaith Week in November 2017 to call on the UK Government to support stateless people and protect them from arbitrary detention. ENS worked with faith groups to produce a faith leaders’ joint statement on statelessness, which attracted over 110 signatures from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim representatives across the UK, in just a few weeks. The statement calls for action by the UK Government to review its policies towards stateless people and to end prolonged and pointless detention. The initiative received widespread media coverage. ENS has continued to develop its Europe Wide Training Programme (EWTP) in partnership with members. In 2017, training was rolled out for lawyers, NGOs and government decision-makers in Spain, Germany and Poland. Sessions in Madrid and Barcelona in October were cofacilitated by ENS President, Gabor Gyulai, and Head of Policy & Research, Nina Murray, with the support of ENS partners, including Pueblos Unidos (Jesuit Migrants Service), CCAR (Comissió Catalana d’Ajuda al Refugiat), Aleksandra Semeriak and Arsenio Cores. Training in Germany was co-facilitated with the Refugee Law Clinic at the University of Cologne, attended by over 30 student lawyers, lawyers and supervisors from the clinic. Further trainings were delivered by our member, Halina Niec Legal Aid Center, in Poland in December. This capacity-building work has reinforced national advocacy towards the introduction and improvement of dedicated statelessness protection mechanisms and has equipped lawyers to directly uphold the human rights of stateless people. In May, ENS held a one-day advanced training workshop and planning meeting in Budapest for our members. We are regularly invited to share our expertise with both governmental and inter-governmental partners. This year, ENS presented at events in Brussels, Berlin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London (x2), Strasbourg (x2) and Vienna. In July and September ENS contributed expertise and facilitated sessions at respectively the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe For churches in Europe 2017 was an essential year to refocus their work on statelessness. ENS has been a highly valuable source of information and inspiration. Their contribution at our summer school and the consultation on statelessness as well as the partnership as a whole have been essential for mobilisation. DR. TORSTEN MORITZ, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY AT THE CHURCHES’ COMMISSION FOR MIGRANTS IN EUROPE (CCME) summer school and a regional conference on statelessness organised by the World Council of Churches and Brot fur die Welt in Berlin. These events provided useful opportunities to plan, strategise and connect churches and faith groups with ENS activities and member organisations across Europe in support of a shared commitment to address statelessness. In November, ASKV, ENS and ISI hosted an expert meeting at Amnesty International in Amsterdam ahead of the UNHCR #IBelong anniversary event at the Rijksmuseum. Our event brought together statelessness and migration experts to reflect on the current situation in the Netherlands, to discuss further actions and to place the debate in the Netherlands in the wider European context. LITIGATING FOR CHANGE Another key component of our law and policy work in 2017 has been the continued development and implementation of a three-year strategic litigation strategy, including through a dedicated working group and a training workshop for lawyers in May. We also provided resourcing to members in Bulgaria and the Netherlands to identify and develop an ’incubator’ of cases suitable for strategic litigation with a focus on arbitrary detention.