2 Introduction and key challenges The UK adopted the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons in April 1959 (‘the Convention’).10 The Convention provides protection by way of specified rights to persons who are ‘not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’.11 The introductory note to the Convention, by UNHCR, uses the language of protection. “It establishes a framework for the international protection of stateless persons and is the most comprehensive codification of the rights of stateless persons yet attempted at the international level.” The Convention points to the “profound vulnerability that affects people who are stateless.”. In November 2011 Asylum Aid and UNHCR published their report “Mapping Statelessness in the United Kingdom.”12 It called on the UK government to implement an accessible procedure to identify stateless persons and to grant them leave to remain in appropriate circumstances. In 2013 the UK introduced a statelessness application procedure which is at Part 14 of the Immigration Rules (‘the Rules’).13 Those Rules make provision for the Home Office to recognise individuals as stateless. They also provide for a grant of leave to remain to stateless persons. Dependants may apply for leave to enter and to remain with the stateless person. Data on statelessness is currently not included in the Home Office quarterly Immigration statistics.14 The problem of unreliable data on stateless persons was identified in the ‘Mapping Statelessness’ report in 2011.15 The only published data is in UNHCR statistics.16 These show that there have been 85 grants of leave since the procedure was introduced in April 2013. In the first two years of operation only 40 grants of leave to remain were made, with a 95% refusal rate.17 We understand that there were additional grants during the years 2015-17. We have tried to get more up-to-date figures and a breakdown of numbers of applications and grants on a yearly basis through a Freedom of Information Request.18 The Home Office refused the request on the basis that they intend to publish the data in the future. The procedure was warmly welcomed when it was introduced, but Asylum Aid, UNHCR and others raised concerns at the outset about some elements such as the lack of access to good legal 10 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons 1954 http://www.unhcr.org/un-conventions-onstatelessness.html 11 Article 1(1) of the Convention. The definition is considered to be customary law – see UNHCR, ‘Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons’ (2014) http://www.unhcr.org/dach/wpcontent/uploads/sites/27/2017/04/CH-UNHCR_Handbook-on-Protection-of-Stateless-Persons.pdf 12 Asylum Aid, Mapping Statelessness in the UK (Research Paper, 24 December 2011) https://www.asylumaid.org.uk/mapping-statelessness-in-the-uk/ 13 Immigration Rules, Part 14: Stateless Persons https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigrationrules/immigration-rules-part-14-stateless-persons 14 Home Office, ‘Immigration Statistics, Year Ending March 2018’ (2018) https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-year-ending-march-2018 15 Asylum Aid, Mapping Statelessness in the UK (Research Paper, 24 December 2011) <https://www.asylumaid.org.uk/mapping-statelessness-in-the-uk/> 16 UNHCR, ‘Mid-Year Trends’ (June 2017) http://www.unhcr.org/uk/statistics/unhcrstats/5aaa4fd27/mid-year-trends-june-2017.html 17 Numbers provided to the Law Clinic through UNHCR in June 2016 18 See https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/the_statelessness_determination?nocache=incoming1158537#incoming-1158537 6