Yesterday the UN’s Human Rights Council—a body responsible for promoting and protecting human rights around the world—passed an important resolution on the right to nationality, focusing specifically on women and children. This is an important step to further strengthen international legal norms in this area. It is also a strong indication of increasing understanding and concern for those who have no nationality anywhere—the stateless—and those who experience severe discrimination when they attempt to obtain proof of their nationality. 

Almost exactly 21 years ago – on 25 June 1991 – Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia. After this momentous event a period of transitional laws followed, including regulations for acquisition of citizenship in the new state. Slovenia set three conditions for citizenship.  Citizens had to have acquired permanent resident status in Slovenia by 23 December 1990; they must have been residents of Slovenia at the time of independence; and they had to make an application for citizenship within six months of independence.

Stateless persons are amongst the most vulnerable in the world today. The widely quoted figures state that there are more than 12 million stateless persons worldwide with over 600,000 in Europe. There is less certainty about the population in the UK, though recent research sheds some light on the extent of the population and examines the current treatment of stateless persons in the country. 

Estimates suggest that there are several thousand people living in Serbia today, predominantly Roma, both children and adults, displaced and domiciled, who are not registered in birth registry books and who are therefore not recognized as persons before the law. We call them the “legally invisible“.