Stateless refugees and migrants

People affected by statelessness risk discrimination and rights violations if their nationality problems are not properly addressed in international protection procedures and in the provision of essential services. Yet, most countries in Europe are inadequately prepared to respond.

Of the 5.5 million people who applied for asylum in the European Economic Area in 2013-2019, over 145,000 were recorded as stateless or of unknown nationality. On average, around 3% of first-time asylum applicants are recorded as being stateless or of unknown nationality. Many more refugees come from countries where gender discrimination, gaps in nationality laws or deprivation of nationality results in statelessness. This includes countries like Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Iran, Eritrea, and Sudan.

The fact that an asylum applicant may be stateless is often critical when assessing their claim for international protection. Being stateless not only impacts on the initial assessment of the claim, it can also affect access to procedures such as family reunion, resettlement, or naturalisation because stateless refugees are unlikely to have documentary proof of identity and family links.

Europe is not doing enough to uphold and protect the specific rights of stateless people in international law, and it is also producing new cases of statelessness, because gaps in states’ nationality laws mean that children are still being born stateless in Europe. Only half of European States have full safeguards in their nationality laws to prevent childhood statelessness.

To protect the rights of stateless people on the move, their nationality problems must be identified and acted upon. But this rarely happens. Only a handful of European States have legal frameworks in place to determine statelessness and grant stateless people protection.

What needs to be done?

• Better identification and decision-making: registration and decision-making authorities need information, guidance, and capacity-building to improve the identification of statelessness, to inform decision-making (e.g. country of origin information on statelessness), and to improve referrals between relevant procedures to ensure stateless people access the rights they are entitled to.
• Protection for stateless people: European countries that don’t yet have them need to introduce dedicated procedures to determine statelessness and grant protection (including residence, rights and a route to nationality) under the 1954 Convention.
• Information and legal aid: refugees and migrants affected by statelessness and nationality problems need information and legal advice in formats and languages that are accessible and relevant to them to ensure they are aware of and can access their rights.
• Child’s right to a nationality: the nationality rights of refugee and migrant children must be upheld by guaranteeing that every child’s birth is registered and they receive a birth certificate regardless of the identity or status of their parents; and that full safeguards in nationality laws are established and implemented to grant nationality to children born on a country’s territory if they would otherwise be stateless.
• Flexible procedures: to ensure stateless people do not face discrimination in access to procedures such as family reunification, resettlement or naturalisation, these must be flexible and adaptable to the particular circumstances of stateless people who may not have a birth certificate, identity documents, or proof of family links.