South Asia State of Minorities Report 2019 Denied a nationality, stateless persons are among the most excluded of peoples, vulnerable to discrimination, violence and persecution. According to the latest (2017) figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are 3.9 million people who belong to the category of ‘stateless’.14 But the UN agency admits that this figure is a gross underestimate and the actual figure could be as high as 12 million.15 The discrepancy in figures is mainly due to the fact that, Fewer than half the countries in the world possess government data on stateless populations. The most populous countries with suspected stateless populations do not report on statelessness, among them China, India, Indonesia and Nigeria (together accounting for 42 per cent of the entire world population).16 Significantly, according to the UNHCR’s 2017 figures, more than 75 per cent of the estimated global stateless population belong to national or ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities. This has contributed to the conclusion from the current Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Fernand de Varennes, that statelessness is a disproportionately minority issue. The key role of discrimination in contributing to statelessness has also been recognised by the UNHCR’s #IBelong Campaign, which seeks to eradicate statelessness by 2024.17 The officially recognised population of the stateless in South Asia is close to 1 million, with all of them being Rohingyas who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar, which itself is likely to be a gross underestimate.18 Apart from this group, there is no recognised group 14 Lily Chen, Petra Nahmias and Sebastian Steinmueller, ‘UNHCR Statistical Reporting on Statelessness’,UNHCR Statistics Technical Series, no.1 (October 2019), accessed February 25, 2020, https://www.unhcr.org/5d9e182e7.pdf. 15 United Nations News, ‘12 million stateless people globally, warns UNHCR chief in call to States for decisive action’, United Nations News, November 12, 2018, https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/11/1025561. 16 Lily Chen, Petra Nahmias and Sebastian Steinmueller, ‘UNHCR Statistical Reporting on Statelessness’,UNHCR Statistics Technical Series, no.1 (October 2019), https://www.unhcr.org/5d9e182e7.pdf. 17 ‘Four years into its #IBelong Campaign to end statelessness, UNHCR calls for more resolute action by states’, UNHCR, November 13, 2018, accessed February 25, 2020, https://www.unhcr.org/news/press/2018/11/5be95d7c4/four-years-its-ibelongcampaign-end-statelessness-unhcr-calls-resolute.html. 18 Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, ‘Statelessness in Numbers: 2018 xxx