Ending Statelessness

Kyrgyz human rights lawyer Azizbek Ashurov said combating statelessness was "simple", but required political will.

"If governments will make a political decision to end this, they can," Ashurov told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

An estimated 10 to 15 million people are not recognised as nationals by any country, often depriving them of basic rights most of the world takes for granted such as education, healthcare, housing and jobs. People become stateless for a host of complex historical, social and legal reasons - including migration, flawed citizenship laws and ethnic discrimination. Hundreds of thousands fell through the cracks after the break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, many becoming stranded across newly established borders with invalid Soviet passports or no way to prove where they were born. Stateless people cannot open businesses, pay taxes or contribute to society and are forced to work illegally, making them vulnerable to exploitation from criminal groups

There has been little progress towards solutions for some of the world's largest stateless populations, which include 692,000 people in Ivory Coast and more than 1 million Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh.