Chapter 6 Chapter 6 Stateless People Stateless people are not considered as nationals by any State. Statelessness is sometimes referred to as an invisible problem, and stateless people frequently live in precarious situations on the margins of society, making it a challenge to measure the issue. Despite increased awareness of statelessness globally, more needs to be done to encourage and capacitate governments to identify and report on stateless people on their territory. Fewer than half the countries in the world have any government data on stateless populations. As a result, UNHCR was unable to provide comprehensive statistics on stateless people in all countries in 2017. Of the unhcr > Global trends 2017 estimated 10 million stateless people around the world, only 3.9 million are captured in this report. Reporting on stateless populations is a particular challenge for UNHCR as many displaced people are also stateless. In 2017, it was decided to report the displaced Rohingya population as stateless. Previously UNHCR had not reported displaced populations – which includes refugees, IDPs, and asylum-seekers – as stateless, including them instead in a separate count to avoid double counting of the population of concern. This year, however, displaced populations that can be definitively 51