UNHCR Statelessness

Info

Page on UNHCR's work to generate more awareness and action to address statelessness.

Geschichte

Being stateless means that no State considers you as its national. Many of us will have problems imagining a life without the possibility to go to school, obtain legal employment, register the birth of our children, or to travel abroad. Yet, this is the reality many stateless persons are confronted with.

UNHCR estimates that as many as 12 million individuals around the world are stateless. Stateless people can be found on every continent and in nearly every country of the world. Many became stateless when the State they lived in dissolved or changed borders, such as when the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia disintegrated two decades ago. Others became stateless as a result of discrimination against particular ethnic or racial groups. In 26 countries women cannot transmit their nationality to their children on an equal basis as men. Statelessness may also result from the strange workings of nationality laws, for instance when children are born to parents of different nationalities but cannot acquire the nationality of either one because they reside abroad.