280
Tucker
approximately 92,000, they are described in Estonian national legislation as
‘aliens’ or ‘persons of undetermined citizenship’.11
Despite their de jure statelessness, the Estonians of Russian origin enjoy
many rights on par with Estonian citizens, and it has been claimed that they
should be considered de facto citizens of the country.12 While there is not the
space to explore all the intricacies of this group’s rights, it has been claimed
that their rights can be enjoyed to such an extent that ‘the main particularities
of the issues of statelessness in Estonia consists of the fact that legal status
[their de jure statelessness] does not seem to have any noticeable impact on
how people manage in their daily life’.13 Their legal status, namely their de jure
statelessness, thus seems relatively inconsequential. These ‘citizen’ rights
include social rights, legal protection, nearly equal political rights,14 passports
and consular protection.15 The population is also protected under a supranational regime, namely the European Union’s laws on non-discrimination and
the rights of long term residence, to name but a few.16
Considering the closeness of their effective citizenship to Estonian citizenship proper it can be argued that they are one of the world’s ‘luckiest’ de jure
stateless groups and a shining example of de facto citizenship. The discourse
11
12
13
14
15
16
Human Rights Europe, ‘Stateless Europeans: Nils Muižnieks warns of “significant” problem in Russia, Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia’ (2013) <www.humanrightseurope.org/2013/01/
stateless-europeans-nils-muiznieks-warns-of-significant-problem-in-russia-ukraine
-estonia-and-latvia/> accessed 5 October 2013.
R. Vetik, ‘The Stateless issue of Estonia’, in C. Sawyer and B. Blitz (eds), Statelessness in the
European Union; Displaced, Undocumented, Unwanted (Oxford University press 2011).
Ibid, 251.
Despite there being ‘no international norms which demand that the persons of other
countries or people with undetermined citizenship should participate in the elections of
parliament (…) [T]he fact that stateless people can vote on the local elections in Estonia
is a positive tendency’. K. Kaldur et al, ‘Political participation of third country nationals on
national and local level’ 2011 <http://pasos.org/6905/political-participation-of-third
-country-nationals-on-a-national-and-local-level/> accessed 5 October 2013, 12.
Article 59 of the Consular Act even stipulates that consular assistance shall be provided
to an alien who is residing in Estonia in accordance with the international custom (reference). Article 1(2) of the same law specifies further that for the purposes of this act, an
alien is a person who lives in Estonia on the basis of a residence permit and to whom an
Estonian alien’s passport has been issued on the basis of Article 27 of the Identity Docu
ments Act. UNHCR, ‘Submission by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Compilation Report Universal Periodic Review: ESTONIA 2011’ <http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4c3abc002
.pdf> 6.
EU Council Directive 2003/109/EU.
tilburg law review 19 (2014) 276-284