It is difficult to select a single
highlight from my trip to Strasbourg this week. Hearing different UNHCR staff
members speak with confidence about the campaign to end statelessness by 2024,
which will be officially launched next month? Or hearing the support expressed
by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights for the efforts of the
European Network on Statelessness (ENS) to help raise awareness of and address
statelessness in the region? Or speaking on behalf of ENS at a hearing of the
Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Committees on Asylum and Migration and
on Legal affairs and Human Rights about ‘Eliminating Statelessness in Europe’? Or
looking out from my position on this panel to see so many familiar faces in the
observer seats as ENS members turned out in force to attend the hearing? Or holding
a hard copy of the latest ENS publication in my hands – a report on preventing
childhood statelessness in Europe that was prepared by the Statelessness
Programme in Tilburg, with input from ENS members around the region? Or hearing
about new developments and initiatives on statelessness in countries from Italy
to Latvia and from the UK to Slovakia? Or looking ahead to the further campaign
work of ENS this year, including an online petition for the protection of
stateless people in Europe that will be launched in May? Or seeing the reaction
(a mixture of empathy and incredulity) of a conference room full of people to
the situation of a stateless Tilburg University student when we screened a
short film that we helped to produce? Or joining colleagues who are fast
becoming friends in enjoying a hearty meal and easy conversation at the end of
long days of meetings and in-depth discussions on things like the prospects for
EU engagement or strategic litigation on statelessness?
Actually, if I had to pick just one
highlight, it would probably (selfishly) be this: posing in the cheesy
photo-area in the Palais de l’Europe with the fabulous Valeria Cherednichenko
and Caia Vlieks!
Tilburg talents
Valeria is an alumnus of Tilburg Law School
who did an internship with the Statelessness Programme while she was studying
for her masters in international human rights law and wrote her Masters’ thesis
on statelessness. Determined to pursue the issue further when she left Tilburg,
she secured a PhD position at Carlos III University in Madrid and set out to
research into Spain’s policy and practice on statelessness. Now, Valeria is
about to embark on a brand new challenge as a consultant with UNHCR’s office in
Brussels to help support statelessness activities around the region in the
coming months. Valeria was in Strasbourg to get a head start on this new job
(which she officially starts later in the month) by participating in the series
of statelessness activities that were being organised there this week.
Caia is a current student of Tilburg Law
School, where she will soon complete the Research Masters programme. She also
interned with us at the Statelessness Programme and wrote her Masters’
dissertation on whether an obligation to determine statelessness can be
distilled from the European Convention of Human Rights. This piece of research
– which was incredibly well executed – was identified as a potential resource
for discussions that were being initiated within the European Network on
Statelessness about the prospects for strategic litigation on statelessness in
the region. Caia was commissioned to draft a discussion paper based on her
study of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and was invited to
Strasbourg to present it to the lawyers and legal aid organisations which were
convened to discuss cooperation on strategic litigation (one of the many
meetings crammed into this exciting week).
Strasbourg and statelessness
Since the mid-1990s, when the dissolution
of the USSR and of Yugoslavia left hundreds of thousands of people in Europe
without a nationality, statelessness has been on and off the agenda of the
Council of Europe and of its institutions in Strasbourg. In 1997, a dedicated
regional treaty providing, among other things, safeguards to ensure the
enjoyment of the right to a nationality was adopted: the European Convention on
Nationality. A series of conferences on nationality was convened, with legal
experts and government policy makers invited to discuss the challenges faced in
this field. In 2006, another regional treaty was passed, this one dealing
specifically with the avoidance of statelessness in the context of state
succession. Various relevant recommendations have been passed by the Committee
of Ministers and the European Court of Human Rights has been seized with a
number of cases in which the denial of nationality or the impact of
statelessness was addressed. A new chapter was added this week, with the adoptionof a further resolution and recommendation on access to nationality.
Packing in events
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Laura
van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager, Statelessness Programme
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