1. Aims of this paper • • • To review what literature or other evidence exists setting out current understanding of risks of statelessness among refugee children in Europe. To map who holds knowledge, information and power to effect change on this issue. To make findings relevant to the production of a framework and methodology for research to be carried out by the European Network on Statelessness (ENS) with its members to fill evidence gaps, communicate more clearly on the issue, and develop concrete and measurable policy and legal solutions. The paper is organised around the different sources of evidence that exist, addressing the aims in the context of each, and then making holistic findings at the end. 2. Overview of existing evidence, research, and theories Key source documents are ENS’s: • • No Child Should be Stateless: Ensuring the right to a nationality for children in migration in Europe (April 2020) Birth registration and the prevention of statelessness in Europe: identifying good practices and remaining barriers, Thematic Briefing (May 2020) These documents draw on earlier work by ENS and its members and reference existing literature and evidence on risks of statelessness among refugee children in Europe. They identify causes of statelessness and limitations in State responses that increase the risk that children at risk of statelessness become stateless, and that stateless children remain unidentified, or are identified but remain stateless. It is not the purpose of this paper to revisit the summaries of existing research and theories, and the conclusions that they reach, particularly as they are so recent. Rather, they, and the goals identified in them, are the starting point and this document should be read with them. Their recommendations appear as Annex 1. While birth registration is the focus of the most recent publication, ENS also considers the other issues highlighted in No Child Should be Stateless to be important, although this review confirms ENS’s conclusion that civil registration is central to addressing the question of statelessness where children are concerned. 3. Existing evidence The written sources of information about stateless children of refugees in Europe1 identified through this review are: • • • 1 Accounts of, and documentation held by, individual refugees, people seeking asylum, people refused asylum, and other migrants Quantitative information Law reports The geographic scope of ENS’s work encompasses the 47 member States of the Council of Europe. 2