GUEST POST: "A small step, perhaps, but a move in the right direction to help 600,000 people find somewhere to call home"

This is how CNN reported on the European Network on Statelessness (ENS) campaign to protect stateless persons in Europe after we handed over our online petition at an event in the European Parliament on Tuesday evening. Aside from pleasant surprise that CNN had picked up on our campaign, it struck me as a pretty good description of what we as a Network have managed to achieve over the last year since the launch of our campaign in October 2013.

You can never properly evaluate the impact of a campaign in its immediate aftermath but some positives conclusions can already be drawn about the campaign’s contribution to the fast accelerating emergence of statelessness as an issue finally attracting widespread international attention. It’s hugely encouraging that over 7,000 individuals from across Europe have made the effort to sign our online petition calling for:

1)      All European States to accede to the 1954 Statelessness Convention

2)      All European states to introduce a functioning statelessness determination procedure

It’s true that in the larger scheme of things, this signature count is not so high compared to some other online petitions (e.g. which relate to issues attracting mass media coverage or that are fuelled by organisations with weighty communications machinery which ENS could only dream about). So it’s actually accurate and in no way belittling for CNN to describe the campaign as “a small step, perhaps” but “a move in the right direction to help 600,000 people find somewhere to call home”. It’s certainly true that we need to take many more and much bigger strides if we are to truly address the situation of not only Europe’s 600,000 stateless but also the estimated 10 million persons across the globe who are afflicted by this man-made phenomenon.

But 7,000 signatures is undoubtedly an impressive figure when you consider that statelessness has for decades been a niche and largely forgotten issue. Factor in also that our campaign period has coincided with ENS transitioning into an independent charity (and all the work that this entails) and the limited resources at our disposal, we can be rightly proud of our efforts. So now is a good moment to say a massive thank you to all our members who supported the campaign as well as to those many other organisations outside our immediate Network (too many to mention here) who helped disseminate our petition.

And beyond shedding a much needed spotlight on the statelessness issue in a broader sense, there are already some encouraging signs of tangible impact through reforms announced in two of the countries which ENS prioritised in its campaign activities, namely Italy and the Netherlands. At an event organised in Rome by ENS member the Italian Refugee Council, the Italian government committed by the end of the year to table a draft law aimed at simplifying and improving the existing administrative procedure to recognise the status of statelessness. In the Netherlands, growing pressure from civil society organisations, UNHCR, the National Human Rights Institute, the Advisory Council on Migration Affairs and practicing lawyers led to the recognition by the competent ministry in September 2014 that a statelessness determination procedure is needed and the announcement that the ministry will work towards its establishment.  In other countries such as Ireland, Poland and Slovakia the campaign impact fell short of such firm commitments but observers described increased awareness having created a dialogue to progress reform in the coming years.

Tuesday’s event hosted by Jean Lambert MEP in the European Parliament was the culmination of the ENS campaign, and featured presentations by UNHCR Europe Bureau Director, Vincent Cochetel, and the award-winning photographer, Greg Constantine, who screened a photo essay on statelessness in the Netherlands (supported by ENS and the Tilburg Statelessness Programme). The petition was formally received by Cecilia Wickstrom MEP, Chair of the Parliament’s Petitions Committee, who made an impassioned acceptance speech which bodes well for future influence the Petitions Committee can hopefully  bring to bear on other EU institutions in terms of stepping up their engagement on statelessness. It was also encouraging to see the room packed with over 60 people, including approximately 10 MEPs who had taken time out of their busy schedules in order to attend the event. The end of the ENS campaign has also been (or will be) marked by national-level events organised by ENS members in Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Slovakia. The ENS campaign day of action was covered not only by CNN but also by Thomson Reuters.

Recognising that statelessness is often dismissed as an impenetrably technical and legal anomaly, an important aspect of our communications work has been to try to put a human face on the issue, including through the production of several short films by ENS or its members. A key element of this approach was the commissioning of a short animation Everyone has the right to a nationality which proved hugely successful in raising awareness about the plight of stateless migrants in Europe and in encouraging petition signatures. Just one illustration of this is that UNHCR’s Facebook post of the animated film attracted almost 500 likes in a day. The petition and animation were also featured in mailings by ECRE, ICVA, IDC, APRRN and the Forced Migration Current Awareness Blog to name but a few. And many ENS members placed the campaign prominently on their own websites and/or tweeted, posted or emailed the petition to their networks. These combined efforts saw the petition being mailed out to thousands of professional and personal contacts, and the animation has now been viewed over 5000 times on YouTube alone. ENS has also seen over 400 new likes of its Facebook page, and its mailing list has grown exponentially.

From the start the petition was presented and disseminated on social media along with first hand testimonies from stateless persons hosted on the ENS website. A feature on these snapshots of stateless people was published in English and French in Forced Migration Review with a link to the petition. Twenty shorter testimonies were also gathered through research by ENS members in 11 European countries and published in a new report Still Stateless, Still Suffering which was formally launched in the event in the European Parliament on Tuesday. While just a small snapshot of Europe’s total stateless population, these too long unheard voices speak powerfully to the human impact that statelessness has on people living in Europe, including destitution, long term immigration detention and being stuck in indefinite limbo unable to be removed but equally unable to belong or contribute to scoiety.

The campaign has garnered media coverage in several languages across many European countries. In the UK there have been articles in respected publications with broad readerships such as The Independent , Thomson Reuters and The Equal Times. The issue has been widely covered in the Slovak Republic, with two articles published in Slovak on major news websites; Hlavné Správy and actuálne.sk. In Belgium, various articles were published, including in the influential and popular Mo Magazine. The petition also benefitted from media coverage across the Netherlands, with Dutch articles featuring on the Nederlands Juristenblad, Tilburg.com and Wereldjournalisten.nl. The issue of statelessness was given radio coverage on 35 local stations and 2 national stations in Ireland via Newstalk, and two articles were published in thejournal.ie. It was also covered by Il Mondo in Italy. More recently, the Press Agency of the Slovak Republic picked up on the campaign in an interview with Katarina Fajnorová of the Human Rights League Slovakia. In Poland, the issue has been raised in articles published by both tvn24 and rp.pl. And many more besides.

But after taking a brief moment to pat ourselves on the back, now we move on. We must build on this increased awareness, not only in those countries (such as Italy and the Netherlands) where reform is now underway but also in the majority of European states which are yet to make any real movement towards introducing statelessness determination procedures. And despite some positive noises at a recent UNHCR roundtable in Warsaw, Poland (along with Estonia, Cyprus and Malta) is yet to even ratify the 1954 Statelessness Convention despite the EU having pledged in 2012 that all Member States would do so.

ENS has set up a working group of member organisations to take forward this work over the next two years and in support of our campaign call that all European states introduce a functioning statelessness determination procedure by the end of 2016. In this period we will also fast track a programme of work aimed at ending the arbitrary detention of stateless migrants. And in November we will launch our next campaign seeking to end childhood statelessness in Europe. We hope this will represent a valuable contribution to UNHCR’s ambitious ten year campaign to eradicate statelessness across the globe. Daunting though that objective is, hopefully the success with the ENS campaign puts a spring in our step as we work towards this.

Chris Nash, Director, European Network on Statelessness

[this blog originally appeared on the website of ENS here: http://www.statelessness.eu/blog/%E2%80%9C-small-step-perhaps-move-right-direction-help-600000-people-find-somewhere-call-home%E2%80%9D] 

The story behind finding some of Europe’s invisible people

Although hundreds of thousands of stateless people live in Europe, finding them can be a challenge at times. An important part of the ENS campaign to improve protection of stateless persons in Europe is helping to take away the invisibility of the issue of statelessness in Europe. As part of this campaign, testimonies of stateless individuals in Europe have been collected in an effort to give statelessness a ‘human face’.

Contributing to this campaign, the Statelessness Programme at Tilburg University has been gathering stories of stateless persons in the Netherlands since September 2013. The Netherlands has not established a statelessness determination procedure, which means that it is unclear how many stateless persons there are in the country. In 2010, over 85,000 people were registered with Dutch municipalities as stateless or “nationality unknown” – many of the latter may also be in fact stateless. In this blog post I would like to take you through the journey, the challenges and surprises, of giving a ‘human face’ to statelessness.

Identifying stateless persons

Many individuals, non-profit organizations and NGO’s find the phenomenon of statelessness very confusing or do not have a full understanding of what it means. So where does one begin in first locating and then trying to identify an individual as stateless?  At first, it seems like looking for a needle in a haystack, but after seven months of work I was able to meet 15 stateless persons and families, all with different backgrounds, which helped painting a clearer picture of the countless situations which exist for a person to be or end up stateless in the Netherlands.

In the first two months I had contacted 200+ organizations across the country that in some way deal with (irregular) migrants, and many of them had questions about how to identify stateless people. They felt unable to distinguish stateless people from other non-nationals: in their eyes, many of the irregular migrants they assist face the same issues, including being unable to return to their country of origin and the inability to prove their nationality or to acquire identity documents. Nonetheless, with help from students at Tilburg University, fellow colleagues and interns at the Statelessness Programme but also lawyers, volunteers at non-profit organizations and religious institutions I was able to get in touch with stateless people who would be willing to share their story.

I have met stateless persons from as young as 3 months right up to 80 years of age from different countries including Myanmar, China, Congo, Ukraine, Viet Nam, Macedonia, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Palestine but also children born stateless in the Netherlands. Some have never been recognized as a national of any state while others had their nationality withdrawn for a variety of reasons and are unable to reacquire their nationality.

Challenges faced by stateless people in the Netherlands

Some of the stateless persons I met possess a residence permit, often based on an immigration amnesty law which was adopted in 2007. They face the problem that they are now unable to naturalize because of their inability to prove their statelessness. I also met stateless people who are staying irregularly in the Netherlands. The lack of a statelessness determination procedure is causing inadequate protection for these people. As a matter of fact, more than half of all persons I met have never even acquired a residence permit, even those that have been living here in the Netherlands for over 15 years. As a result, they have been completely dependent on interim-aid from, for instance, shelters and churches. I noticed a common wish shared amongst them – to return to their homeland and if that is not possible to be somewhere in the world where their statelessness is acknowledged. For many of them, what seems like such a simple wish is accompanied by countless procedures, a web of requirements they are unable to meet, and the lack of proper documentation.

Many people live in fear of being detained because of their residence status and, therefore, live in loneliness and some have not left the city or village in which they have lived for years. Others have been traumatized from being detained multiple times for not possessing identity documents, not only in the Netherlands but also abroad, and struggle with psychological and physical health issues due to stress, about the constant worry about their legal procedures and their desperate hope to acquire a regularized stay and feel human again. This was prevalent, especially amongst the young adults, many of whom mentioned that they do not have any prospects for realizing their future plans such as studying, working, having a family or being able to travel. Hopes and ambitions shared amongst many of their peers. They say not to have any form of control over their own lives because all they can do is wait, wait for a residence permit which enables them to have a normal life.

It has really been an eye-opening experience for me to see the poor conditions that some of these stateless persons are forced to live in here in the Netherlands. Some of them are living in real poverty, moving between makeshift shelters such as the ones which have been constricted in a parking garage with little access to running water and electricity, or inside a former prison, knowing that in three months it will be time to pack up again and look for a new ‘home’. My first reaction to this was: how is it possible that people have to live in such circumstances in what is a so-called ‘first-world country’?

As mentioned, I also met stateless people who possess a residence permit and their human rights are, contrary to those who are irregularly in the Netherlands, much better protected. It has been very interesting to see their perspective on the phenomenon of statelessness, especially after meeting the stateless persons who do not have a legalized stay in the Netherlands. According to them, not having a nationality disadvantages them in some ways, such as not being able to vote or to travel to some countries but most of them are studying at a university and they are all determined to make a good living. They refuse to let the fact that they do not have a nationality keep them from their ambitions and dreams to better themselves - instead it is just a personal circumstance that requires more administrative work for them and more bureaucracy.

Some reflections

In the past eight months I have been able to get to know only 15 of the 600,000 stateless persons in Europe a little better. One of the challenges with this storytelling project was, at first, building trust with some of the stateless persons and letting them know that they will not get in trouble for sharing their story and giving insights of what it is like to being stateless and living in a European country. After spending some time with the stateless persons, they actually truly appreciated that someone is taking the time to talk with them and listen to their story.

What upsets me the most is to know that these persons, who are just a few faces in the crowd of thousands of stateless persons in Europe, do not receive adequate protection from the country in which they currently live. When they explain to me how statelessness affects their daily lives, I can see sorrow and confusion reflected in their eyes, along with a faint spark of hope when they express their wishes for the future. I can feel that they are tired and frustrated of being stuck in legal limbo. Yet they acknowledge that it is important to share their story in order to raise awareness for the issue of statelessness, knowing it will not help their individual case at this point.

More attention is now being paid to statelessness in Europe, including thanks to this ENS campaign. Last month, Greg Constantine visited the Netherlands on the invitation of ENS and the Statelessness Programme. Working with Greg and seeing his dedication as a human rights photographer to make the issue of statelessness visible is admirable. For the past eight years, Greg has devoted his career to meeting stateless people worldwide but had yet to meet stateless people in a Western European country. During his visit here, he took his time really getting to know the stateless persons I had been speaking to and was able to capture the stories of these unique individuals through photographs. Afterwards, everyone was genuinely happy to have met Greg and found it an opportunity they would not want to miss. Besides telling their own stories, they were curious to hear more about Greg’s work. For instance, a stateless Rohingya from Myanmar said: ‘I am so happy to have met Greg. He has been to Myamar and Bangladesh several times and it feels good to talk about my situation with someone who understands and knows from experience what it is like there’. A photo essay with these stories will be ready by September, in time to be exhibited at the First Global Forum on Statelessness in The Hague and to be used as part of the ENS campaign.

It is also fantastic news that more than 3500 people have already showed concern and signed the ENS petition to protect statelessness in Europe since it was launched three weeks ago. However, more signatures are needed to show leaders of Europe that the issue of statelessness cannot be ignored.

Sangita Jaghai, Intern at the Statelessness Programme

Note that this blog post first appeared on the website of the European Network on Statelessness, here: http://www.statelessness.eu/blog/story-behind-finding-some-europe%E2%80%99s-invisible-people.  

Act now and help protect stateless people across Europe

When meeting a stateless person what is often so very striking is their understandable bewilderment about the situation they have been unlucky enough to find themselves in, and a corresponding desperate desire on their part to establish an identity and to enjoy the sort of normal daily life that most of us take for granted.

This same sense of frustration and longing jumps out from testimonies gathered by the European Network on Statelessness as part of its campaign to protect stateless persons in Europe. Launched last October, this will culminate with a coordinated day of action on 14 October, and several ENS members are already planning actions or events in support of the campaign. The stories launched today, along with an online petition (available in 9 languages) calling on Europe’s leaders to take action, are intended to give stateless persons a voice and to try to help uncover at least a little of their invisibility. The six stories offer only a snapshot of the typical problems faced by stateless people across Europe today but hopefully will help serve as a wake-up call for governments to put in place the relatively simple reforms that would provide a much-needed solution.

Take Isa, stateless in Serbia, and who feels different a “million times” because of his lack of citizenship or any identity documents. Or Sarah, stuck in limbo in the Netherlands, who explains “I live day by day, not knowing what the future will bring”. Or Luka, who despite having lived in Slovakia for over 20 years, is unable to work or even officially to be recognized as the father of the child he has with his partner, a Slovak national. In many respects even more alarming is the fact that both Luka and Roman, another stateless person stuck in limbo in Slovakia, have lost their personal liberty for no other reason than that they are unlucky enough to be stateless. Roman describes having been detained on 6 to 7 occasions while Luka once spent 14 months in an immigration detention centre.

But as I learnt when invited to speak at a statelessness roundtable organised by UNHCR in Bratislava last week, Slovakian legislation actually already provides a discretionary power to regularise stateless persons but unfortunately lacks any form of dedicated determination procedure to enable officials to reliably identify stateless persons on its territory. But it would be unfair to single out Slovakia in this regard as the regrettable fact is that most European states still lack such basic procedures which are urgently necessary if these countries are to honour the obligations they signed up to when ratifying the 1954 Statelessness Convention. So except for a few states that have yet even to take the first step of acceding to the Convention (including Cyprus, Estonia, Malta and Poland) the problem really is one of implementation.  In this regard, last December ENS published its good practice guide on statelessness determination, intended as a tool for states considering introducing these essential dedicated procedures.

Obviously the stories described above are just a glimpse of the human impact of statelessness but they echo recent more detailed research undertaken, including through UNHCR mapping studies in Belgium and the Netherlands. This research confirms that the absence of a route by which stateless persons can regularise their status leaves these individuals at risk of a range of human rights abuses. Many stateless persons find themselves destitute or forced to sleep rough on the streets. Others are subjected to long term immigration detention despite there being no prospect of return. Few are in a position to break this cycle, and as a consequence are left in legal limbo for years.

We are asking you and others concerned about statelessness in Europe to sign the following online petition:

To European leaders,

Around 600,000 stateless persons live in Europe today, including many migrants stuck in perpetual limbo. They urgently require our protection. We ask that:

1) All European states accede to the 1954 Statelessness Convention by the end 2014.

2) All European states without a functioning statelessness determination procedure make a clear commitment during 2014 to take necessary steps to introduce one by the end 2016.

Act now by signing and sharing this petition with your contacts!

With your support we can bring Europe’s legal ghosts out of the shadows and ensure that stateless persons are treated with the respect and dignity which has been lacking.

Thank you!

By Chris Nash, Coordinator of the European Network on Statelessness

This blog first appeared on the European Network on Statelessness website at http://www.statelessness.eu/blog/act-now-and-help-protect-stateless-people-across-europe

Statelessness on the agenda in Strasbourg, and Tilburg represented in force!

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.

The debate on this issue by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) was preceded by a special hearing, convened in collaboration with UNHCR, to consider the question of ‘Eliminating Statelessness in Europe’. This session was designed to offer members of the PACE committees on Asylum and Migration and on Legal Affairs and Human Rights a chance to hear or raise themselves some fresh ideas about how Europe can tackle the pressing challenge of finding solutions for the over 600,000 stateless people in the region today. Offering food for thought were a trio of presenters who each brought a different perspective to the issue: UNHCR, a member state government (Italy) and civil society. Representing the latter of these and speaking on behalf of ENS, was me. I had the pleasure to present a newly issued ENS report that discusses the prevention of childhoodstatelessness in Europe. The Statelessness Programme in Tilburg was commissioned by ENS to draft this report with input from ENS members from around the region, and it highlights issues, gaps and good practices before setting out of an agenda for action. The overall message, which seemed to resonate well with the Parliamentarians who had gathered for the hearing: it is undesirable, unnecessary and simply unacceptable that children are still being born stateless in Europe today.  

Packing in events

Taking advantage of the occasion of this special hearing on statelessness, ENS lined-up a series of other meetings and events this week. The first ever Annual General Conference was held on Monday – an important milestone in the development of this civil society coalition which was formed less than two years ago but had already attracted over 80 members spread across over 30 countries. Here we shared plans for activities to support the current ENS campaign to strengthen the protection of stateless people in Europe, including by pushing for the establishment of Statelessness Determination Procedures to ensure access to a protection status. We also considered the future ambitions and work of ENS, including ideas around new campaign issues. On Tuesday, ENS and UNHCR convened a joint conference entitled ‘Stateless but not rightless’, which was also open to other stakeholders and drew approximately 100 participants in total. There we held in-depth panel discussions about how the Council of Europe institutions – in particular the Court (but also the Social Rights Committee) can contribute to a better response to statelessness in the region. A clear highlight here was the eloquent and rousing keynote address by Commissioner for Human Rights NilsMuiznieks who reinforced the message that statelessness in Europe is solvableand that it is imperative that the existing problems not be passed to a newgeneration. Wednesday was filled with a lively debate about strategic litigation opportunities and challenges, marking the beginning of the formulation of a strategy for ENS engagement on this – before the PACE hearing kicked off and the Assembly provided the icing on the cake of a successful week by adopting a resolution and recommendation packed with important messages about states’ responsibilities to address statelessness.  

Laura van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager, Statelessness Programme

Europe must not allow its children to grow up without a nationality

How do you explain statelessness to a child?

Yes, you were born here. And yes, mummy comes from here. And yes, daddy comes from here. And yes, you speak our language. And yes, you celebrate the same festivals as us. And yes, you look just like all the other children who live and play in your neighbourhood.

But no, you are not really one of us. You are not officially a member of our community. You are an outsider. You are an alien. And no, there is also no other place for you to belong. You are stateless.

That’s a tricky thing to explain, but harder still to justify. It’s a sad fact then, that of the 10 million plus stateless people worldwide, it is estimated that half are children: born and now fast growing up without a nationality. How is this even possible when as early as 1930, governments were drawing up international agreements in order to ensure that no child is left stateless? How is this possible when many decades ago, childhood statelessness was already identified as an entirely avoidable problem and the necessary preventative measures were already known (e.g. the norms found in the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness)? And perhaps most intriguingly, why has ‘even’ Europe not succeeded in staving off this problem, despite additional regional agreements that guarantee children’s right to a nationality (e.g. the norms found in the 1997 European Convention on Nationality)?  

The truth, like it or not, is that Europe is still a ‘producer’ of statelessness. Day to day, this may no longer be on the same alarming scale as when statelessness was suddenly created by the redrawing of borders and disintegration of states in the Europe of the 1990s. Nor may it have the same shocking and condemnable undercurrent as when statelessness resulted from policies of mass denationalization in the Europe of the 1930s. Yet I cannot help but be both alarmed and shocked by the fact that it is possible to be born stateless in Europe today. Indeed, this is a significant concern both in countries which already have large stateless populations – such as Latvia and Estonia – as well as where statelessness is a relatively marginal issue. A recent ENS blog highlighted just one of the many thousands of tragic stories of people born without, and growing without, a nationality. And to offer my own country by way of example: of the approx. 2000 people who are listed in the Dutch civil registry as ‘stateless’, it is astounding to discover that 1400 (or 70%) of these individuals were born in the Netherlands.

In order to better understand how, why and where things are going wrong, the European Network on Statelessness took the initiative to compile a report on Preventing Childhood Statelessness in Europe. It draws on existing comparative nationality law research conducted by the European Union Democracy Observatory on Citizenship, existing literature on problems of implementation of nationality laws and information provided by ENS members. This report looks at how Europe is performing with respect to international and regional standards in the fields of human rights, child rights and statelessness all protect the child’s right to acquire a nationality. In light of the overall goal of preventing childhood statelessness it highlights the main issues, gaps and good practices. It is launched this week, on the eve of an important series of events that will take place in Strasbourg from 7-9 April and which will focus on the challenge of addressing statelessness in Europe. The hope is that this will inspire further recognition and understanding of, and ultimately more effective law and policy to combat, the problem of childhood statelessness in Europe.

The report concludes with a series of important recommendations:

1. Ensure that all otherwise stateless children born on the territory of a European state acquire a nationality promptly.

2. Address the inadequacy of safeguards to prevent statelessness for children born on the territory as a matter of priority in those countries with large, existing stateless populations.

3. Ensure that restrictions on the conferral of nationality jus sanguinis to children born abroad do not lead to statelessness.

4. Abolish any difference in treatment in nationality laws with regards to children born out of wedlock.

5. Simplify procedures for birth registration and confirmation of nationality in countries with a problem of intergenerational lack of documentation.

6. Review nationality laws to identify and revise any provisions that could lead to loss of nationality of children, leaving them stateless.

Click here to access the ENS report ‘Preventing Childhood Statelessness in Europe: Issues, Gaps and Good Practices’.

Dr Laura van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager of the Statelessness Programme, Tilburg University. 

Please note that this blog post originally appeared on the website of the European Network on Statelessness, accessible via www.statelessness.eu. 

ENS launches Good Practices Guide on Statelessness Determination and Protection to Mark International Human Rights Day

The European Network on Statelessness (ENS) celebrated International Human Rights Day yesterday, by launching its inaugural publication “Statelessness Determination and the Protection Status of Stateless Persons: a Summary Guide of Good Practices and Factors to Consider when Designing National Determination and Protection Mechanisms”. Stateless people are a particularly vulnerable group when it comes to the ability to exercise human rights, and determination procedures are key to their effective protection in a migratory context. This ENS guide serves as a tool for civil society advocates lobbying for and states considering the establishment of domestic statelessness determination procedures and protection mechanisms.

On this the 20th anniversary year of the establishment of the mandate of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, International Human Rights Day has been themed “20 Years: Working for Your Rights”, but with an emphasis on the future and challenges that lie ahead. The task of looking back over 20 years of endeavour and achievement in the human rights field and drawing on this foundation to plan for future challenges resonates strongly with statelessness as an issue, the development of ENS and its recently launched campaign to improve protection for stateless persons in Europe. The publication of the good practices guide is a key component of one of the campaign’s two primary objectives, namely that all European states take steps to introduce statelessness determination procedures.

Twenty years ago, statelessness was a well hidden and poorly understood issue. As the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began to actively explore its statelessness mandate and as academics and NGOs began to grapple with the issue, our collective understanding of the extent of statelessness and its human impact evolved, enabling us to respond more effectively to the challenge of statelessness. Over these past 20 years, statelessness has ceased to be perceived purely as a complex legal anomaly and been re-characterised as fundamentally a human rights issue that must be addressed through both the human rights framework and international statelessness mechanisms. This joined up thinking as well as efforts to understand the impact of statelessness on related fields such as development, healthcare, economics, humanitarian aid and security (to name but a few) has the potential to greatly strengthen the statelessness movement, and to draw in new and important allies from other disciplines. The growth of expertise and interest in statelessness over the past two decades is well reflected in the ENS story, which germinated as an idea in 2010, evolved into an informal discussion between a few organisations in 2011 and today is a fully functional civil society network with over 50 member organisations in more than 30 European countries. 

The identification of stateless persons is an important process, necessary to ensure compliance both with the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and with international human rights law. The state obligation to not discriminate against stateless persons, for example, can only be fully complied with if states know who the stateless are among their populations. The failure to implement fair, accessible, non-discriminatory and non-arbitrary determination procedures that comply with substantive and procedural standards under international law would result in people not being appropriately identified as stateless and consequently being denied the human rights protection they are entitled to.

Twenty years ago, only two countries (France and Italy) had procedures in place to identify and protect the stateless. Today, there are twelve such states, with several others having made pledges in this regard. The ENS Guide looks at these twelve states, at UNHCR and expert guidance and at international law, to tease out good practices that states about to implement new procedures should consider adapting and replicating. Consequently, it is an exercise in the discipline of looking back in order to plan for the future – which goes to the very core of the theme of this year’s celebration.

Looking forward to the next few years of the human rights journey, ENS remains committed to addressing statelessness in Europe and globally. The identification of stateless persons is a crucial first step towards protection, and ENS hopes this Guide will contribute to the growing human rights movement to protect the stateless and end statelessness in the future.

 The ENS Good Practice Guide is available on the ENS website at  http://www.statelessness.eu/resources/ens-good-practice-guide-statelessness-determination-and-protection-status-stateless  and a print copy can be requested by emailing ENS Coordinator Chris Nash at info@statelessness.eu

[This blog originally appeared on 10 December 2013 on the website of the European Network on Statelessness, www.statelessness.eu] 

"Nationality Matters", 5 years on: how far statelessness has travelled

Exactly five years ago today, I found myself in the main auditorium of Tilburg University, wearing a brand new dress, armed with a hot-off-the-press copy of my PhD manuscript “Nationality Matters”, ready to take the final step towards earning my ‘Dr’ title. In front of family, friends and colleagues, I stood on the podium, tackling questions on my research from a committee of professors who were clad in the traditional gowns of academia and who protocol dictated I address as “highly esteemed opponent”. I have no recollection now of either what was asked or what I answered, but I do remember the buzz that it gave me to – finally, in my eyes – have a truly captive audience for a discussion on ‘my’ topic and passion: statelessness. According to the rules in place in Tilburg, the examining committee and I, as well as our audience, would only be released from the task of exploring my research findings once a full 45 minutes had passed and the officiator (the “beadle”) re-entered the auditorium to strike the floor with the ceremonial staff he has charge of for this purpose and call an end to the proceedings. Although this is perhaps not the experience of everyone who has stood in my shoes and defended their PhD, I really enjoyed it! After 4 years of hard work, these 45 minutes were just the opportunity I had been waiting for to try to win some fresh hearts and minds on the issue. Thinking back to it today makes me smile.

What makes me smile more is thinking about all of the things that have happened since. I would be the first to admit that statelessness has not been resolved – far from it – and we are facing new and severe crises in terms of guaranteeing that stateless people are protected (think of the deterioration of the situation of stateless people in Myanmar) and ensuring that statelessness is avoided (think of the recent Constitutional Court ruling in the Dominican Republic that may create thousands of new cases). Yet the context in which this is happening, and even the very awareness that it is happening and that it is a problem, is very different today. Momentum to address statelessness has built in a manner I did not and could not have foreseen on the day I defended my PhD research. For example…

Growing the circle of ‘friends of statelessness’

While certainly not alone in my concern for statelessness over the course of my PhD project nor at its conclusion in 2008, there were only really a very small number of people worldwide who were interested or able to dedicate a significant amount of time and attention to the issue. Today, statelessness is no longer a lonely profession. All around the world students, activists, lawyers, policy makers and others are taking up the cause. Staffing within the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – the UN agency mandated by the General Assembly to address statelessness – is indicative of this trend. In my PhD I bemoaned the fact that of a 6000-strong staff, less than a handful were dedicated to statelessness. Five years on and the team at headquarters level has expanded in size, regional officers have been posted to help to coordinate and support work on statelessness in five major regions of the world, many national offices have dedicated staff and agency-wide there is far greater awareness of and capacity to contribute to statelessness work thanks to a concerted effort to hundreds more staff on the issue. Within civil society, there has also been a transformation, from a situation in which a few isolated individuals and organisations had devoted themselves to the unenviable task of dragging the issue out of obscurity, initiatives are now mushrooming. Within Europe, this engagement is even starting to take on a new level of sophistication. A region-wide coalition of civil society actors launched in the summer of 2012 – the European Network on Statelessness – has rapidly grown to an 80-member strong network and is already embarking on its first pan-European, coordinated campaign.

Embracing the UN statelessness conventions

The focus of my PhD research was the international legal framework relevant to addressing statelessness, placing centre-stage the two UN conventions that have been specifically designed for the purposes of responding to statelessness (deconstructing and contrasting these against norms found within international human rights law). Described, by UNHCR as recently as 1999, as “orphan conventions”, the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness were certainly largely unknown, much less appreciated international law tools. Again I am reminded by my own manuscript that at the time of publication in 2008, these conventions had just 62 and 34 state parties respectively. Today, 5 years on, the tally has climbed to 79 and 54. These numbers may still fail to impress those who are used to the ratification figures for instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (187 state parties) or the Convention on the Rights of the Child (193 state parties). Nevertheless, when put in perspective, the upward curve in accessions is significant. For instance, consider the fact that it took the 1961 Convention 40 years to gather its first twenty state parties and now it has achieved the same in just the last five years. It is no wonder that UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has described these developments as “unprecedented” and the public expressions of commitment by states to statelessness through these and other channels as a “quantum leap” for the issue. Having often wondered, during the tougher days of my PhD project, whether there was a point to poring over the text and interpretation of two old and neglected international treaties, it is particularly rewarding to see that their enduring value is not just being recognised, but also seized upon, as a way for states to reinvigorate their efforts to tackle the problem of statelessness.  

Welcoming much-needed conceptual guidance

… Throughout my PhD research there was one particular challenge that I kept coming back to, again and again: the question of what exactly the scope of the definition of a stateless person is and how this definition should be applied in practice to identify whether a particular individual is stateless. While this was not ultimately central to answering my research question, it is something that nagged at me. I clearly remember feeling frustrated by the absence of the kind of core conceptual guidance on these questions that exists, for example, in the field of refugee law. In the end, I included a comment to this effect in my conclusion, suggesting that further clarification was sorely needed on these and other aspects of statelessness law and that UNHCR should lead this process. Five years on and UNHCR is well on its way to elaborating a handbook on statelessness! It has already issued highly informative guidelines on the definition of a stateless person, how to go about the process of identification/determination of statelessness and what status a stateless person should enjoy in accordance with international obligations. There is even guidance on how the safeguards to prevent statelessness at birth must be interpreted and implemented; and soon there will be a clarification of the norms and standards around loss and deprivation of nationality. To someone like me, who struggled alone in an office with a whiteboard and marker, scribbling and re-scribbling ideas/diagrams/flowcharts to try to make sense of it all, the issuance of this much-needed guidance is perhaps the greatest and most significant change. We now have a shared understanding as our starting point and a very well-crafted set of documents that lay the conceptual foundations for anyone who wants to provide training, undertake research or engage in debate on statelessness issues. I have had the pleasure of being involved in many rewarding statelessness activities since completing my PhD and it would be difficult to pick a particular one that stands out from among them. However, I feel particularly privileged to have been able to participate in the expert meetings held to date, the conclusions of which informed the subsequent UNHCR guidelines – and some of my fondest statelessness memories are of collectively thrashing out, once and for all, these fascinating conceptual questions.

Setting bold ambitions for the future

… I also have the sense that, for want of a better way to describe it, the language of statelessness has changed over the last five years. Where once people were almost apologetic about raising the issue or mentioning the relevant conventions at events or in publications, given the above developments there is now a sense that statelessness has earned its place on the agenda and it is spoken about with greater confidence. There is also much more and more diverse information, research, stakeholders, activities, etc regarding statelessness. With the broader engagement of actors, wider acknowledgement of the issue and the relevance of the international framework, clearer conceptual understanding and increase in confidence, it feels as though there is also a shift in ambition. Perhaps the boldest expression of this new level of ambition is the explicit call made by UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, to the agency’s executive body to work to eradicate statelessness, in a decade. Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, has said that there should be no stateless children in Europe. Just this month, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon reportedly called for an end to statelessness ahead of a visit to Latvia, where almost 300,000 people are still without a nationality. Every year since I started my research, but especially in the last five years, I have watched closely as bigger, bolder and more exciting initiatives have unfolded. Certainly, there is no more question as to whether statelessness is an issue in its own right: it is and more must and will be done.

These are just a few reflections on how far statelessness has travelled in just five years – there is undoubtedly plenty more to say on the matter. These comments should not by any means be mistaken as insinuating that the change has come about because of the publication of my PhD. To the contrary, I am grateful that the issue ‘found’ me at the time that it did and that I have been able to watch and where possible contribute to some of these developments. Statelessness remains, 5 years on from that exciting day in Tilburg University’s auditorium and almost 10 years on from the day I first crossed paths with the issue, an intrinsically fascinating, intellectually stimulating, deeply moving and truly rewarding problem to work on.

A single regret

On this personal statelessness anniversary, as I reacquaint myself with my own PhD manuscript and think back to where my journey started, I have just one regret in terms of the path that I have chosen. It was the simple story of a worried father and a baby without a nationality that first spurred my interest in the topic. Had I never met this man – a client at the local refugee advice centre where I was volunteering at the time – and heard about his son, I would never have picked statelessness as the focus of my PhD. I am very grateful to this family for opening my eyes to an issue I had previously never contemplated or even heard of and my one regret is not being conscious of the significance of the encounter at the time. Because of that, I quickly lost touch of them and didn’t follow up on their story, so I am ignorant as to if and how it was resolved. I am also very conscious now of the fact that I also did not have the appropriate knowledge or understanding of the issue at the time to know how to help. Still, perhaps instead I can offer their story again here, as told in the opening of my PhD, in the hope that it may help others to understand my first answer to the question “why statelessness?” and perhaps inspire more people to be compassionate towards or even take up the cause of the stateless…

This is the story of the first stateless person I knew:

Once upon a time, in a town in the Southeast of the Netherlands, a baby boy was born. His parents were thrilled and named him Omar, seeing this extension of their family as a good sign for the future and a fresh start for them all. Omar’s parents had been forced to flee their homes in the Middle East some years before, leaving everything that they had behind. They eventually won the right to settle in the Netherlands and were making the most of it. Omar’s father found a job and quickly picked up the language. As soon as he was eligible, he successfully applied for the Dutch nationality in order to affirm his new link with the country. But what he most dearly wanted was to be able to marry Omar’s mother. Sadly, they did not have the documents required by Dutch law to do so. Instead, they muddled along in the hope that one day they would be able to afford to send for the right documents or pay for the replacements in order to get married.  

Then Omar was born and they were overjoyed. Omar’s father went straight from the hospital to the town hall to register the birth, all the while oozing the pride of a man who has newly become a father. Omar was registered: his name, date and place of birth recorded. But when the registrar logged “unknown” in the box marked “nationality”, Omar’s father grew worried. After all, he was Dutch and his son was born on Dutch soil, so surely Omar would also be Dutch.  

Little did he know that just a few months previously a new law had come into force. This law required him to register the imminent birth of his son while his girlfriend was still pregnant. Failing to do so - and because he and Omar’s mother were not married - he would not automatically be recognised as the boy’s father and his son would not acquire his nationality. 

Omar’s father quickly made the necessary arrangements at the local court to be legally recognised as the father, but this procedure did not grant Omar the Dutch nationality. Nor could Omar acquire the nationality of his mother, as she was the national of a country that did not allow women to pass on their nationality to their children. Omar’s nationality was therefore more than unknown: it was absent. He was stateless. 

After they had recovered from the shock, Omar’s parents began to discover the consequences of his statelessness. Omar could not obtain a passport, or be included in the passport of either of his parents, he could only apply for a foreigners’ travel pass at substantial cost. Omar was also registered by the immigration service as “a foreigner who entered the country for family reunification purposes” – an interesting feat for a baby just a few days old. His parents would have to pay a sizeable fee for a residence permit for Omar, without which he could, in theory, be subject to expulsion.  

Later, in order to have any hope of resolving his plight, Omar’s parents would have to fight for his formal recognition as a stateless person. This may then allow Omar to benefit from provisions in the Dutch law that offer nationality to a stateless child after three year, so long as he remains within the country in that time and under the care of his Dutch father.

This initial experience of statelessness provides much food for thought and one possible answer to the question “why statelessness?” can arguably already be found in the personal struggle of this family. Statelessness presents a real, human dilemma for this one boy and his parents.

Laura van Waas, Senior Researcher and Manager, Statelessness Programme