Chapter 2. Europe and Statelessness also create statelessness. Syrian refugee children, for instance, are at risk of statelessness because of the application of Syrian nationality laws and difficulties with proving their nationality and discriminatory nationality laws in the country of origin.471 The EU was faced with another challenge when the UK left the EU in January 2020, after long negotiations as a result of the 2016 referendum in which the majority of UK voters indicated that they would like to leave the EU. Shortly after, in March 2020, Europe was confronted with yet another crisis: COVID-19. A dangerous virus quickly infected parts of the population, forcing states to take far-reaching measures to contain it. Many European states went into lockdown, meaning that people were no longer allowed to go to work, to school or to restaurants and shops, and should stay at home. But it also meant that many states closed their borders. In this global pandemic, those who are already vulnerable, including the stateless, “are at heightened risk”.472 Indeed, stateless people face different consequences and issues as a result of this crisis, including problems surrounding access to rights (healthcare, education, shelter, work and food), increased discrimination, lack of accessible information for stateless people and a general lack of visibility and attention to the needs of the stateless specifically in media, political and other discussions as well as responses.473 At the same time, the issue of statelessness was more firmly brought (back) into the spotlights in recent years474 by a dedicated campaign by UNHCR to end statelessness by 2024.475 Academic scholarship on statelessness increased476, as well as attention by civil society with dedicated non-governmental organizations on statelessness being established.477 This has significantly increased the current body of knowledge on the issue. As chapter 1 showed, statelessness is clearly an issue of interest for the international community. This is evidenced by, for instance, the UNHCR issuing 471 472 473 474 475 476 477 Cf ISI & Norwegian Refugee Council, ‘Understanding Statelessness in the Syria Refugee Context. Research Report’ (2016) <https://www.nrc.no/globalassets/pdf/reports/understanding-statelessnessin-the-syria-refugee-context.pdf> accessed 26 September 2021. OHCHR, IOM, UNHCR & WHO, ‘The Rights and Health of Refugees, Migrants and Stateless Must Be Protected in COVID-19 Response’ (UNHCR, 31 March 2020) <https://www.unhcr.org/news/ press/2020/3/5e836f164/rights-health-refugees-migrants-stateless-must-protected-covid-19-response. html> accessed 26 September 2021. ISI, ‘Together We Can: The COVID-19 Impact on Stateless People & a Roadmap for Change’ (ISI 2021) <https://fi les.institutesi.org/together_we_can_report_2021.pdf> accessed 26 September 2021; ENS, ‘Position Paper: “Even before the pandemic, statelessness has been invisible” – Involving stateless people in Europe’s COVID-19 response’ (ENS 2020) <https://www.statelessness.eu/resources/evenpandemic-statelessness-has-been-invisible-involving-stateless-people-europe-s-covid> accessed 26 September 2021. Eg Laura van Waas, ‘Are We There Yet? The Emergence of Statelessness on the International Human Rights Agenda’ (2014) 32 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 342. See also para 1.5.1. Maria Jose Recalde Vela, Sangita Jaghai-Bajulaiye & Caia Vlieks, ‘The State of Statelessness Research: 5 Years Later (2019) 24 Tilburg Law Review 139. For instance, the European Network on Statelessness (ENS), established in 2012, an open and growing civil society alliance with 150 members in over 40 countries, committed to ending statelessness and ensuring that the estimated 600,000 people living in Europe without a nationality are protected under international law; and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI), established in 2014, the first and the only human rights NGO dedicated to working on statelessness at the global level. Intersentia 87