K E Y FIN DIN GS So l u t i o n s e d u c at i on “It should be the right of every child to study and learn. This is the most important thing.” —BOON, 16, THAILAND UNHCR’s consultations with stateless children and youth found that they confronted myriad challenges when it came to pursuing their education. In some cases, schools denied non-nationals entry to the classroom or demanded the far higher fees applicable to foreigners, making education unaffordable. In others, stateless children were refused admission to final exams or had their diplomas and graduation certificates withheld, halting their progress to higher education and better job prospects. Such children also frequently found themselves ineligible for scholarships or student loans. Whatever the obstacle, the outcome was the same: another young person unable to reach his or her potential. 2 HEALTH B e ing a Ch il d E mpl oy me nt “Why do I have to suffer this way?” “I don’t play baseball this summer.” “The doors of the world are closed to me.” —PRATAP, 15, MALAYSIA —JOE, 13, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC —JIRAIR, 19, GEORGIA Many young stateless people and their parents were forced to forgo professional treatment, even in cases of serious illness or injury. Travel restrictions, the prohibitively high medical costs imposed on foreigners, discrimination and lack of health education often conspired to impede access to health care for the young people who UNHCR spoke to. In some cases, lack of nationality documents meant that stateless mothers gave birth at home rather than in a hospital, thereby also complicating access to birth registration. Even those who were able to acquire nationality as adults continued to pay a psychological toll as a result of their stateless childhoods. In addition to denying children their rights to education and health, statelessness also threatened the freedom of many to feel secure, to play, to explore – to simply be children. Labelled as outsiders in what they saw as their own country, many had to deal with discrimination from an early age. Some had already lived through experiences that had forced them to grow up far too quickly, such as working from a young age, living in insecure housing arrangements or suffering harassment by the authorities. In more extreme cases, stateless girls and boys were vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Left unresolved, statelessness created new and insurmountable roadblocks for many of the young people moving from adolescence to adulthood who were interviewed. The single most-cited frustration of the young stateless women and men consulted for this report was the lack of jobs that matched their ability, ambition and potential. Barriers to education and freedom of movement played a major role in limiting job opportunities and denied many the chance to break previous cycles of poverty and marginalization – the impacts of statelessness being passed from one generation to the next. All the young stateless adults consulted had settled for a life that allowed them to meet their basic needs but fell far short of the future they had imagined for themselves. S TAT E L E S S N E S S R E P O R T I am here, I belong The strongest message to emerge from the consultations with the children and youth was their sense of identification with the countries in which they had been born and had lived all their lives. In almost all cases the best solution to statelessness is to turn a child’s existing links with his or her country of birth and upbringing into the legal bond of nationality. It is vital that this be achieved as early as possible so that no child grows up with the indignities and harm caused by statelessness. The prevention and resolution of childhood statelessness is one of the key goals of UNHCR’s Campaign to End Statelessness in 10 Years, or by 2024. To achieve this goal, UNHCR urges all States to take the following steps in line with the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness: „ Allow children to gain the nationality of the country in which they are born if they would otherwise be stateless. „ Reform laws that prevent mothers from passing their nationality to their children on an equal basis as fathers. „ Eliminate laws and practices that deny children nationality because of their ethnicity, race or religion. „ Ensure universal birth registration to prevent statelessness. S TAT E L E S S N E S S R E P O R T 3