Stateless People

Statelessness: A Web Research Guide

By Elisa Mason
August 2011

1. Introduction

Stateless people are described as hidden, invisible, non-entities, and even legal ghosts.  While significant strides have been made over recent years to change this profile, millions of people worldwide remain stateless, and very few information resources have been compiled to help garner attention to their plight.  The aim of this guide is to provide an overview of the problem of statelessness and to point readers to key information sources as one small step towards addressing this information gap.

Definitions, Causes & Consequences

To be stateless means that you are not considered a citizen of any country.  This is the formal definition (de jure stateless) as set out in Article 1 of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.  Other people may have a nationality but may still be defined as de facto stateless if that nationality proves ineffective, for example, when they are outside their country and denied consular protection.(1) 

Statelessness can arise for a variety of reasons, such as:
Ø      when new states are “created or divided or dissolved, decolonized, conquered or freed…”;
Ø      because of “a change in domestic legislation, or…an incompatibility between the laws of two different states…”; or
Ø      through “the deliberate exclusion of entire groups because of some political,  religious or ethnic discrimination” (Refugees Magazine, p. 2).

In addition, discriminatory nationality laws can render women and children vulnerable to becoming stateless. 

The consequences of not having a nationality or lacking citizenship are dire: A stateless person effectively has no rights and is not protected by the national laws of the country in which s/he resides.  The following resources provide a more thorough introduction to the causes and consequences of statelessness:

  • Lives on Hold: The Human Cost of Statelessness, Refugees International, 2005 
  • “Statelessness,” Forced Migration Review, no. 32, April 2009 

Role of UNHCR

In 1974 the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was mandated by UN General Assembly resolution 3274 to serve as the “body” on statelessness anticipated by Article 11 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.  However, until the 1990s and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, UNHCR was not actively involved in exercising its statelessness mandate, in part because of the low state accession rate to the 1961 Convention.  In 1995 the organization was asked to become more engaged on behalf of stateless persons by both the UNHCR Executive Committee (UNHCR’s advisory body) and the UN General Assembly.  In 2006 EXCOM reiterated its call for UNHCR to pursue “targeted activities to support the identification, prevention and reduction of statelessness and to further the protection of stateless persons.”

For the texts of these and other relevant conclusions and resolutions, see:


An internal evaluation conducted in 2001 recommended still greater commitment and allocation of resources to the issue of statelessness.  Today, UNHCR maintains a Statelessness Unit, and the issue of statelessness has been incorporated into the agency’s budget structure as a Global Strategic Objective and established as one of four programmatic “pillars” (the other three are refugees, reintegration, and IDPs).

To learn more about UNHCR’s activities relating to stateless people and how it fulfills its statelessness mandate, refer to the following:


Statistics

It is difficult to count the actual number of stateless persons around the world.  Often individuals are not registered as being stateless, data may be incomplete, or figures may be withheld for political reasons.  UNHCR attempts to measure the magnitude of statelessness but acknowledges in its statistical yearbook that it is “not in a position to  provide comprehensive statistics on the number of stateless persons in all countries around the world” (p. 26).  Currently, the worldwide stateless population is estimated to be 12 million.

For more specific figures by country, see the section on “stateless persons” in the UNHCR Statistical Yearbook 2009: Trends in Displacement, Protection and Solutions, Chapter II: Population Levels and Trends, and Table 7 in the Annex.

The statelessness surveys referenced below also provide estimates of stateless populations by country.

Country Profiles

To learn more about who is stateless and where, refer to the following resources:

  • “Global Survey of Statelessness,” pp. 28-53 in Nationality Rights for All: A Progress Reports and Global Survey on Statelessness, Refugees International, 2009 
  • “Regions,” International Observatory on Statelessness, Oxford Brookes University and the Refugee Studies Centre 

For additional country information, search the ecoi.net and Refworld databases.  Refer also to the “Regional and Country Studies on Statelessness” page on the UNHCR web site.

2. Sources of Law relating to Statelessness

International Instruments

Statelessness Treaties

As noted above, two international treaties specifically address statelessness: the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.  The former defines stateless people, sets out their status and how they should be treated, while the latter offers safeguards for preventing and reducing statelessness.  Compared to other treaties, these instruments have experienced low accession rates; as of June 2011, the 1954 Convention had 66 states parties, while the 1961 Convention had 38.  Increasing the number of states parties is an important priority for UNHCR, particularly as of 2011, the 50th anniversary year of the 1961 Convention. 

For the texts of these conventions, lists of states parties, treaty declarations and reservations, and a summary of key provisions in each, visit the UN Conventions on Statelessness page on the UNHCR web site. 

For relevant commentaries on these instruments, see:


Resources for promoting accession to these conventions include:


Other Treaties

The right to a nationality and the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of one’s nationality are two principles widely articulated in international law, particularly human rights treaties.  While the statelessness conventions mentioned above may suffer from relatively low accession rates, “the great majority of states are parties to one or several treaties that guarantee the right to citizenship” (Statelessness: What It Is and Why It Matters, pp. 5-6).

The UNHCR web site provides access to extracts relating to nationality and statelessness from selected universal and regional human rights instruments. The complete texts of and signatories to international conventions relating to nationality, human rights and other related matters can be retrieved via Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary-General in the UN Treaty Collection.  European conventions on nationality and statelessness can also be retrieved via the UNHCR site.

Other Instruments

For a helpful listing of relevant conventions, resolutions, guidelines, and other authoritative legal instruments, refer to the Annexes in Statelessness: An Analytical Framework for Prevention, Reduction and Protection, Geneva: UNHCR, 2008.  The references are organized by the specific protection issues associated with statelessness.  Refworld also provides access to an extensive collection of “legal documents related to statelessness.”

National Legislation

You can also use Refworld to view laws on nationality and citizenship.  Select a country from the pull-down menu on the left, then narrow your search results by selecting “national legislation” under “type.”

Case Law

Legal decisions can be retrieved either by searching Refworld’s case law collection or via the following resources:


3.  Additional Resources

Education and Training

A Guide to Teaching on Statelessness, UNHCR, 2010
- “[D]esigned to help university instructors to integrate one or more units on statelessness into an existing course curriculum or to develop a comprehensive course on statelessness.”  Includes 18 units of study, with sample exercises and course readings.

Nationality, Statelessness and Human Rights, 2011-2012
- Undergraduate course taught at Tilburg Law School in The Netherlands.

Self-Study Module 6: Statelessness, UNHCR, Forthcoming
- An introductory text on the problem of statelessness. 

Statelessness Summer School, Tilburg University
- To be piloted in 2012.

Further Reading

Bhabha, Jacqueline, ed., Children Without a State: A Global Human Rights Challenge, MIT Press, 2011

Blitz, Brad K. and Maureen Lynch, eds., Statelessness and Citizenship: A Comparative Study on the Benefits of Nationality, Edward Elgar, 2011
- See also an earlier version.

Sawyer, Caroline and Brad K. Blitz, eds., Statelessness in the European Union: Displaced, Undocumented, Unwanted, Cambridge University Press, 2011

van Waas, Laura, Nationality Matters: Statelessness under International Law, Intersentia, 2008

Web Resources

In addition to UNHCR, the following organizations have implemented projects on nationality rights and/or statelessness and provide access to news and information on their web sites:

More broadly, the International Observatory on Statelessness serves as an information clearinghouse, Refworld functions as a comprehensive repository of legal, policy and country information relating to statelessness, and the Forced Migration Current Awareness blog points readers to relevant research and publication on statelessness and stateless persons.

Endnote:

(1) The definition of de facto statelessness is currently being debated.  For more information, see The Concept of Stateless Persons under International Law: Summary Conclusions (2011) and UNHCR and De Facto Statelessness (2011). 
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