The voices of people with lived experience of statelessness need to be heard in places where the decisions that affect them are made. That’s why last week, together with two stateless changemakers, Armando Augello Cupi and Lynn Khatib, we headed to Strasbourg to meet Members of the European Parliament and key stakeholders from the Council of Europe. We organised a number of meetings over the two days to re-engage existing allies and win over new supporters for our #StatelessJourneys campaign.

Over the course of two days, Lynn and Armando met with over 40 Members of the European Parliament, to discuss causes and impacts of statelessness, what needs to change at the European level, and what concrete action parliamentarians can take to address the issue.
Together, we urged MEPs to ensure that statelessness is mainstreamed in debates around migration/asylum, children and minority rights, and particularly around the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum.

We also met with relevant Council of Europe bodies working on statelessness to enhance our ongoing engagement and collaboration. We discussed future plans with the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, the Special Representative on Migration & Refugees, and the Human Rights Directorate.
We believe that this type of engagement is crucial in building the platforms we need to better challenge situations of deprivation, disadvantage and discrimination faced by stateless people in Europe.
We know that the absence of stateless people in the debates around policy is not due to a lack of willingness to speak out and be involved. This is why we are facilitating opportunities for stateless changemakers to deliver their own messages and solutions with parliamentarians and other policy makers, as well as the wider public.

Our upcoming conference in Madrid will be another such opportunity, where we will connect stateless changemakers, community and civil society representatives with high-level political representatives to create an interactive space for constructive dialogue on how to address statelessness. Watch this space.
About the campaign
The #StatelessJourneys campaign calls for full access to rights and support for stateless refugees. Launched in October 2022, the campaign has grown to become an 80-organisation strong coalition that is calling on national and European-level policymakers to better prioritise statelessness when it comes to migration and asylum policy. The campaign was co-designed with stateless changemakers and aims to inspire collective action at regional and national levels: we are working to build momentum at the European level in pushing for improvements in access to rights for stateless refugees.