Statelessness is the
legal and social concept of a person lacking belonging (or a legally enforceable claim) to any recognised
nationality. Statelessness is not always the same as lack of
citizenship.
De jure statelessness is where there exists no recognised
state in respect of which the subject has a legally meritorious basis to claim nationality.
De facto statelessness is where the subject may have a legally meritorious claim but is precluded from asserting it because of practical considerations such as cost, circumstances of civil disorder, or the fear or persecution.
Problems of statelessness
Common ways people may become
stateless and which are addressed by the
1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness are:
- Renunciation of nationality
- Deprivation of nationality (e.g. for disloyalty, for treason, for obtaining nationality by fraud, or as a consequence of marriage or divorce)
- Membership of a group which is denied citizen status in the country on whose territory they are born (e.g. Gypsy and Jews in Third Reich Germany [1935-1945]) - see Nuremberg Laws)


Spanish
gypsy girls,
1917.
Statelessness characterises the existence of nomadic Gypsies
- Birth to stateless person parents
- Birth in disputed territories
- Birth in an area ruled by an entity whose independence is not internationally recognized (e.g. Manchukuo 1932-1945)
- Birth on territory over which no modern state claims sovereignty (e.g. the unclaimed region of Antarctica)
- By excessive fees and burdensome administrative and evidential requirements involved in claiming nationality
- By the conflict of laws between two states (e.g. between the laws of the mother's nationality and those of the father's both working to deny either nationality by descent to the child)
- Transfer of territory or sovereignty which alters nationality status of persons in the territories so transferred
Statelessness creates problems for
states and disadvantages for those left
stateless, such as:
Some advantages of statelessness:
- The stateless person may avoid obligations of citizenship, such as civil or military conscription, compulsion to vote, and compulsion to render jury service. It is worth noting that many nations retain the right to conscript permanent residents, regardless of their nationality or lack thereof. Taxes also may still be assessed.
- The status of stateless persons at least outranks that of an enemy alien in time of war
Statelessness and refugees
Statelessness most commonly affects
refugees although not all refugees are stateless, and not all
stateless persons may be able to qualify as refugees. Refugee status entails the extra requirements that the refugee is outside their country of
nationality (or country of habitual residence if stateless), and is deserving of
asylum based upon a well-founded fear of persecution for categorized reasons which make him/her unwilling or unable to avail the protection of that country.
Statelessness and children
Principle 3 of the
1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child asserts that:
"The child shall be entitled from his birth to a name and a nationality."
States bound by the
1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are obligated to implement policies and programs to ensure that children's families and national authorities can secure
citizenship for every child in the country.
In practise, when a child’s birth is not registered that child’s existence may not be acknowledged and the child
may be denied
citizenship. Of even greater concern is that some governing bodies refuse to recognize births — and therefore the existence and the nationality of some children - because of
race,
ethnicity, or
questions of “legitimacy.”
Characteristics of
statelessness affect
Amerasian children and young adults in
Southeast Asia. They are commonly fathered abroad by US servicemen and mothers of Asian nationalities.
Statelessness and women
An attempt to reduce discrimination against women is made in the
1957 Convention on the Nationality of Married Women with its provisions to prevent the automatic acquisition of the husband's citizenship. It also intends to prevent women losing
citizenship and becoming
stateless if they marry a stateless man.
[1]
Statelessness prior to World War II


4th Century BCE Sicilian Impression of a Theatre Slave
Statelessness characterised the status of
slaves and inhabitants of conquered territories in the
Greco-Roman world of
antiquity. In antiquity, statelessness could be seen to affect captive and subject populations denied full citizenship (see
Roman Citizen) including those enslaved e.g. conquered populations excluded from Roman citizenship such as the
Gauls immediately following the
Gallic Wars;
Israelites under
Babylonian captivity.
Characteristics of statelessness are seen amongst
apostates and
slaves in Islamic society; the former being persons shunned by or rejecting their tribal/national/ethno-religious birth identity, the latter being persons separated from that identity and subsumed into an
underclass role.
Statelessness has perennially characterised the existence of
Roma People by virtue of their nomadic lifestyles over centuries of traversing lands claimed by others.
The
Office International Nansen pour les Réfugiés, was an organization of the
League of Nations, which was internationally in charge of
refugees from war areas from
1930 to
1939. It received the
Nobel Peace Prize in
1938. Their
Nansen passports, designed in
1922 by founder
Fridtjof Nansen, were internationally recognized
identity cards first issued by the
League of Nations to
stateless refugees. In
1942 they were honored by governments in 52 countries and were the first
refugee travel documents.
UN Action addressing the problem of statelessness
The initial focus of UN Action was the sponsorship of Conventions in 1954 (the 'Status Convention') and 1961 (the 'Reduction Convention') resulting in instruments of
international law. Continuing action through the
UNHCR encourages member states to take up ratification and address statelessness within their own borders by programs of naturalisation and co-operation with neighbouring
states.
UNHCR also conducts public education campaigns to highlight the plight of
stateless person communities in special need.
Outside of the UN, regional initiatives to address statelessness and its associated problems can be seen in
multilateral treaty instruments such as the
Council of Europe Convention on Reduction of Statelessness in Relation to State Succession.
ECOSOC, The ILC, The 1951 Refugee Convention
Migrations forced by political instability during
World War II and its immediate aftermath highlighted the international dimension of the problems presented by unprecedented volumes of displaced persons including those rendered effectively
stateless.
Dating from December 1948 and with the imprimatur of the world communit acting through the
United Nations, the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Article 15 affirms that
- Everyone has the right to a nationality.
- No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
In 1949, the
International Law Commission included the topic "Nationality,
including statelessness" in its list of topics of international law provisionally selected for codification. At the behest of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in
1950, that item was given priority.
The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was done on 28 July 1951, later attracting the signatures of 145 State parties
As of late January 2005.
[2]
The
International Law Commission at its fifth session in 1953 produced both a Draft Convention on the
Elimination of Future Statelessness, and a Draft Convention on the
Reduction of Future Statelessness. ECOSOC approved both drafts.
A
Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons was signed in September 1954.
[3] It was complemented by the '
Statelessness Reduction Convention' seven years afterwards.
Status Convention
The
1954 Status Convention provided for the
UNHCR to issue
travel documents to
stateless persons. It urged for
stateless persons to be treated at least as fairly as
aliens and in some cases to be treated the same as
nationals by Contracting States (e.g. in their access to the courts, their rights to movable property, their rights to
intellectual property). It also acknowledged the problem of stateless seamen by urging that
states should confer their
citizenship on such people according to the flags of the vessels to which they are attached.
Albert Einstein was a stateless person in the period 1896-1901. In
1933 he was affected by
German race laws standing him down from his professorship. He renounced his
German citizenship, became a
refugee, and was granted
asylum in the
USA. From
1940 until his death he enjoyed
dual citizenship of
Switzerland and the USA.
Reduction Convention
The
1961 Statelessness Reduction Convention was a significant aspirational achievement in working to eliminate the problem of statelessness, or at least the problems associated with it. The
Reduction Convention is binding on those
states that have
ratified or
acceded to it and it also works to create norms and to codify and confirm principles of
customary international law as they relate to
nationality law existing at the time of its formation. Among these would be:
- States have absolute sovereignty to confer their nationality on any person for any reason
- Otherwise stateless persons may avail birthright citizenship of the place of their birth (or of the place where they were found, in the case of a foundling), otherwise they may take the nationality of one of their parents or that of another Contracting State in which they have resided for a qualifying period
- An otherwise stateless person born in wedlock shall have the right to take the nationality of their mother
- A stateless person has some time beyond attaining adulthood to seek to claim the benefit of the Convention. That time is always at least three years from the age of eighteen.
- The benefit of the Convention may be claimed by guardians on behalf of their wards.
- States may impose a period of residence qualification for granting nationality to persons who may be otherwise stateless. That period is a maximum five years immediately prior to application and maximum of ten years overall.
- Disloyal or serious criminal conduct my limit an individual's ability to avail the benefit of the Convention
- Birth on a sea vessel or aircraft presumptively attacts the nationality of the flag of that vessel or craft for an otherwise stateless person
- Overtaking of territory by states presumptively confers the nationality of the overtaking state on the inhabitants of the territory. States must work together in treaty relations to eliminate the possibility of statelessness occurring by the cession of territories to each other.
Statelessness since 1961
1961 marks the year from which the
UN proposed to exercise a mandate over
stateless persons beyond the production of
travel documents upon request for them.
In
1974, the
UN General Assembly requested the
UNHCR to undertake the functions foreseen under the
Reduction Convention.
On 13 December
1975, the
1961 Convention entered into force. There is a poor level of uptake, with only 35 state
ratifications or
accessions in the period to February
2007.
In
1995, the UNHCR Executive Committee(ExCom) and the
United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) requested
UNHCR to broaden its activities concerning statelessness to include
all states. The office was also asked to gather and share information on the problem of statelessness globally, to train staff and government officials, and to regularly report back to the ExCom.
In
1996 UNHCR was asked by the
UNGA to actively promote
accession to the
1954 and the
1961 Conventions, as well as to provide relevant technical and advisory services pertaining to the preparation and implementation of
nationality legislation to interested states.
Regional instruments, such as the
1997 European Convention on Nationality, have also contributed to protecting the rights of stateless persons. That document underlines the need of every person to have a
nationality, and seeks to clarify the rights and responsibilities of
states in ensuring individual access to a
nationality.
The
UNHCR has achieved some success in launching campaigns to prevent and reduce statelessness among formerly
deported peoples in Crimea,
Ukraine (
Armenians,
Crimean Tatars,
Germans, and
Greeks who were
deported en masse at the close of
World War II).
[4] Another success has been the
naturalization of
Tajik refugees in
Kyrgyzstan, as well as the participation in
citizenship campaigns enabling 300,000
Estate Tamils to acquire
citizenship of
Sri Lanka. The
UNHCR also assisted the
Czech Republic to overcome the large number of
stateless persons created when it separated from
Slovakia.
An internal evaluation released in
2001 suggested that
UNHCR had done little to exercise its mandate on statelessness. Only two individuals were tasked with overseeing work in that area at
UNHCR headquarters, though field officers had been trained to address the issue. There was no dedicated budget line. Concerned organisations such as Refugees International have advocated for the appointment of a permanent UN Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Statelessness
[5]
In
2004, ExCom invited
UNHCR to pay particular attention to situations of protracted statelessness and explore with
states measures that would ameliorate the situations and bring them to an end.
At the beginning of
2006 the
UNHCR claimed to have 'on its books' 2.4 million stateless persons, and made an estimate of 11 million as the size of the
stateless person population worldwide.
[6]
The greatest populations (over 100,000) of
stateless persons are seen to be in the
Dominican Republic,
Ivory Coast,
Congo,
Syria,
Iraq,
Latvia and
Estonia,
Nepal,
Bangladesh,
Burma,
Thailand and
Cambodia. Statelessness is adjudged to be least significant in
North America,
Oceania,
North Africa,
Southern Africa, most of
South America, and
China.
[7]
Palestinians comprise the largest stateless population in the world.
[8]
Over half of the Palestinian people in the world are stateless.
[9]
References
See also
External links
Further reading
LAW may refer to:
- Lightweight Anti-tank Weapon, like the M72 LAW (US Army) and the LAW 80 (British Army)
- Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights (also known as LAW)
- League of American Bicyclists, formerly known as the League of American Wheelmen
..... Click the link for more information. Nationality is a relationship between a person and their state of origin, culture, association, affiliation and/or loyalty. Nationality affords the state jurisdiction over the person, and affords the person the protection of the state.
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Citizenship is membership in a political community (originally a city or town but now usually a country) and carries with it rights to political participation; a person having such membership is a citizen.
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A state is a political association with effective dominion over a geographic area. It usually includes the set of institutions that claim the authority to make the rules that govern the people of the society in that territory, though its status as a state often depends in part on
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A stateless person is someone with no citizenship or nationality. It may be because the state that gave their previous nationality has ceased to exist and there is no successor state, or their nationality has been repudiated by their own state, effectively making them refugees.
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Romani people (Devanagari: रोमानी, as a noun, singular Rom, plural Roma; sometimes Rrom, Rroma) or Romanies are an ethnic group living in many communities all over the world.
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Historical Jewish languages
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The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were denaturalization laws passed in Nazi Germany. They used a pseudoscientific basis for racial discrimination against Jews. People with 4 German grandparents (white circles on the chart) were of "German blood", while people were classified as Jews if
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A stateless person is someone with no citizenship or nationality. It may be because the state that gave their previous nationality has ceased to exist and there is no successor state, or their nationality has been repudiated by their own state, effectively making them refugees.
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Manchukuo (満州国, lit. "State of Manchuria") was a puppet state in Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia created by former Qing Dynasty officials with help from Imperial Japan in 1932.
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Nationality is a relationship between a person and their state of origin, culture, association, affiliation and/or loyalty. Nationality affords the state jurisdiction over the person, and affords the person the protection of the state.
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Conflict of laws, private international law, international private law, or international law (private), in common law systems, is that branch of international law and intranational interstate law that regulates all lawsuits involving a "foreign" law
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A state is a political association with effective dominion over a geographic area. It usually includes the set of institutions that claim the authority to make the rules that govern the people of the society in that territory, though its status as a state often depends in part on
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Sovereignty is the exclusive right to complete political (e.g. legislative, judicial, and/or executive) control over an area of governance, people, or oneself. A sovereign is the supreme lawmaking authority, subject to no other.
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Nationality is a relationship between a person and their state of origin, culture, association, affiliation and/or loyalty. Nationality affords the state jurisdiction over the person, and affords the person the protection of the state.
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A state is a political association with effective dominion over a geographic area. It usually includes the set of institutions that claim the authority to make the rules that govern the people of the society in that territory, though its status as a state often depends in part on
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The term
stateless can mean more than one thing:
- A stateless society is another word for anarchy.
- In law, a stateless person is a person without a state, in other words someone who is not a citizen or subject of any state.
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Sexism
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A state is a political association with effective dominion over a geographic area. It usually includes the set of institutions that claim the authority to make the rules that govern the people of the society in that territory, though its status as a state often depends in part on
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Article 1
The Convention applies to stateless persons under the protection of the UNHCR but not to those under the protection of other UN Agencies. It does not apply to persons with rights and obligations acknowledged by their country of residence as indistinguishable from those
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piece of identification (ID) is a document designed to verify aspects of a person's identity. It is also called an identity document or, if in the form of a small standard-sized card, an identity card (IC).
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A stateless person is someone with no citizenship or nationality. It may be because the state that gave their previous nationality has ceased to exist and there is no successor state, or their nationality has been repudiated by their own state, effectively making them refugees.
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Residency can refer to:
- Residency (domicile), the act of establishing or maintaining a residence in a given place
- Permanent residency, indefinite residence within a country despite not having citizenship
..... Click the link for more information. Nationality is a relationship between a person and their state of origin, culture, association, affiliation and/or loyalty. Nationality affords the state jurisdiction over the person, and affords the person the protection of the state.
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Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (established December 14, 1950) protects and supports refugees at the request of a government or the United Nations and assists in their return or resettlement.
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