What is statelessness?

Nationality is a legal bond between a State and an individual. A de jure stateless person is defined in the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons as "a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law". An estimated 15 million people globally are effectively trapped in this legal limbo. This includes persons who are de jure stateless but also persons who are considered de facto stateless because their nationality is not effective or because they face difficulties in establishing their nationality. As explained in the UNHCR/IPU Handbook on Nationality and Statelessness, the phenomenon occurs for a number of reasons including discrimination against specific groups, laws in some countries which prevent women from passing on nationality to their children, failure to guarantee that all citizens from a predecessor State acquire the nationality of successor States in case of State succession and inability of persons to prove their link to a State because births were not registered. Although stateless people may sometimes also be refugees, the two categories are distinct and both groups are people of concern to UNHCR.

The Role of States

Each State determines who its citizens are. However, nationality laws should be consistent with general principles of international law and standards set out in human rights treaties such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

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