The World Socialist Movement is against the existence of the nation state and nationalism, not in support of statelessness, just as we advocate a world of no wages and no money does not mean we endorse slave labour and penury. Statelessness affects at least 10 million people worldwide, and an estimated 600,000 in Europe. The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left large numbers stateless; more than 370,000 people, many of them ethnic Russians, still lack a nationality in Estonia and Latvia. The UNHCR believes a stateless baby is born every 10 minutes. The UNHCR estimates that some 51,000 Syrian refugee children have been born abroad since 2011, and over 70% of them have not been registered at birth, which may make it difficult for them to prove later that they are citizens of Syria.
A stateless person is someone who is not considered as a national by any state. Being stateless means individuals have no legal identity, no passport, no vote, and few or no opportunities to get an education. Without documents, it is impossible to register marriage, so family life is affected. Traveling is difficult, and simple things like opening a bank account or getting a driving licence are impossible. Many find themselves stuck in a legal limbo, and can find themselves facing detention and destitution, unable to work formally, living at the margins of society. The stateless often face insoluble problems over property rights or the custody of children. They live in constant fear of being expelled from a country or sometimes resort to fleeing and split up their families in a desperate attempt to resolve their children’s statelessness. In 27 countries women are denied the right to pass on their nationality to their children on an equal basis as men.
It is 60 years since the UN first promised to resolve statelessness, with the 1954 UN convention relating to the status of stateless persons, and campaigners working in this field are dismayed at how little progress has been made over that time. Although growing numbers of states have signed up to international statelessness treaties (up by 44 in the past two years, to 144 countries globally), just 100,000 people had their statelessness resolved last year, only 1% of the total population. The new campaign sets a 10-year deadline to deal with the issue.
The UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, said: “Statelessness is a profound violation of an individual’s human rights. [It] makes people feel like their very existence is a crime.” The UN characterises being stateless as “complete and utter invisibility”, a silent form of exclusion that usually escapes the headlines. Chris Nash, director of the European Network on Statelessness, describes stateless people as “legal ghosts, exposed to human rights abuses and with no recourse to justice”.
A stateless person is someone who is not considered as a national by any state. Being stateless means individuals have no legal identity, no passport, no vote, and few or no opportunities to get an education. Without documents, it is impossible to register marriage, so family life is affected. Traveling is difficult, and simple things like opening a bank account or getting a driving licence are impossible. Many find themselves stuck in a legal limbo, and can find themselves facing detention and destitution, unable to work formally, living at the margins of society. The stateless often face insoluble problems over property rights or the custody of children. They live in constant fear of being expelled from a country or sometimes resort to fleeing and split up their families in a desperate attempt to resolve their children’s statelessness. In 27 countries women are denied the right to pass on their nationality to their children on an equal basis as men.
It is 60 years since the UN first promised to resolve statelessness, with the 1954 UN convention relating to the status of stateless persons, and campaigners working in this field are dismayed at how little progress has been made over that time. Although growing numbers of states have signed up to international statelessness treaties (up by 44 in the past two years, to 144 countries globally), just 100,000 people had their statelessness resolved last year, only 1% of the total population. The new campaign sets a 10-year deadline to deal with the issue.
The UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, said: “Statelessness is a profound violation of an individual’s human rights. [It] makes people feel like their very existence is a crime.” The UN characterises being stateless as “complete and utter invisibility”, a silent form of exclusion that usually escapes the headlines. Chris Nash, director of the European Network on Statelessness, describes stateless people as “legal ghosts, exposed to human rights abuses and with no recourse to justice”.
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