Estimates of the number of stateless persons in the world vary between 9 and 11 million. The 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons is the international instrument which defines a stateless person and sets out his or her rights and obligations. UNHCR has a specific mandate relating to the prevention and reduction of statelessness and the protection of stateless persons, as specified by the UN General Assembly in 1974 and 1976. That mandate has been expanded by resolutions of the General Assembly and UNHCR's Executive Committee. In February 1996 the General Assembly requested UNHCR to actively promote accession to the 1954 Convention and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. The Assembly also directed UNHCR to help interested countries prepare nationality legislation and called upon states to adopt such laws to reduce statelessness. However, despite UNHCR's efforts only 57 states have ratified the 1954 Convention.

Activities contributing to resolving statelessness

In its search for durable solutions for the displaced, UNHCR has helped determine the nationality status of many stateless refugees, particularly in the context of voluntary repatriation programmes or implementation of the refugee cessation clause. (In the latter, refugee status is withdrawn when there is no longer any recognized need for international protection.) For some refugee groups such as Black Mauritanians, or Feili Kurds from Iraq, arbitrary deprivation of nationality had been the main reason they have been recognized as refugees. The implementation of reintegration programmes in Mauritania and voluntary repatriation programmes in Iraq guaranteed refugees' right to recover nationality upon return.

More generally, UNHCR tries to ensure that in repatriation agreements between countries of asylum and countries of origin, children born in the former are considered nationals of the latter. These provisions complement the efforts of UNHCR and countries of asylum to ensure the systematic registration of births of refugee children. Such a registration system has been implemented for the enormous Afghan refugee populations in Pakistan and Iran. But in other situations, even when the reasons which forced refugees to flee their home countries come to an end and the cessation clause is envisaged, refugees who have developed strong ties with the country of asylum are allowed and helped to apply for citizenship.

For instance, many stateless refugees who did not opt for voluntary repatriation to Tajikistan were granted nationality by Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan in 2004 and 2005. The Government of Kyrgyzstan has been granting citizenship to Tajik refugees since 2000, and more than 5,000 Tajiks have become citizens. Similarly, presidential decrees adopted in 2005 granted Turkmenistan citizenship to 13,245 people, most of them stateless refugees who fled Tajikistan during that country's 1992-97 civil war.

Other situations involving stateless refugees have not progressed as well. Muslims from northern Rakhine State in Myanmar who have returned home have not been able to gain citizenship and remain stateless. Similarly, many refugees from Bhutan who were deprived of citizenship languish in camps in Nepal and foresee little chance of returning home or reacquiring their citizenship.

Prevention of statelessness

When states consider enacting or revising citizenship legislation – or administrative procedures related to citizenship – UNHCR tries to provide legal and technical advice to help prevent statelessness. In the last five years, the organization has provided advice to many states, in particular in Central and Eastern Europe, but also to Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, the Democratic Republic of Congo, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Georgia, Iraq, Mexico, Montenegro, Serbia, Timor Leste, Turkmenistan and Viet Nam, among others.

In addition to the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, there are regional instruments which further contribute to the prevention, reduction and elimination of statelessness. One is the 1997 European Convention on Nationality. There is also a draft protocol on the avoidance of statelessness in relation to state succession which should be adopted by the Council of Europe and open for ratification by the beginning of 2006. The protocol was drafted in an effort to avoid statelessness through state succession, which may occur as a result of a transfer of territory from one state to another, unification of states, dissolution of a state, or separation of part or parts of a territory.

Elaborating on the convention's general principles on nationality, the draft protocol contains specific rules on nationality in cases of state succession. Its 21 articles provide practical guidance on such issues as the responsibilities of the successor and predecessor states, rules of proof, the avoidance of statelessness at birth, and the easing of acquisition of nationality by stateless persons.

Finding solutions to protracted situations

In October 2004, taking into account the findings of the first global survey on statelessness conducted by UNHCR, the organization's Executive Committee requested it to continue to provide technical and operational support to states and to pay more attention to situations involving protracted statelessness. The challenges before UNHCR are many, and include trying to end situations of protracted statelessness which leave millions without effective citizenship. It will have to give priority to situations where the stateless live in extreme poverty but must also address those in which the stateless enjoy almost all the rights of citizens.

Some long-standing situations of statelessness have recently ended due to the political will of the states concerned and the assistance of UNHCR and national or local NGOs. Some examples:

• In Sri Lanka, 190,000 stateless persons acquired citizenship in 2004 on the basis of the 'Grant of Citizenship to Persons of Indian Origin Act', unanimously approved by Parliament in October 2003. This benefited persons who during British colonial rule were brought from India to work on Sri Lanka's tea and coffee plantations. UNHCR and the Sri Lankan authorities designed an information campaign to ensure that stateless persons could apply for citizenship in a fair and transparent manner, and without long or complicated administrative procedures.
  
• In Ukraine, a new legal framework allowed acquisition of citizenship by the formerly deported Crimean Tatars and their descendants. Between October 2004 and the end of March 2005, more than 2,800 returnees from Uzbekistan were able to acquire Ukrainian citizenship under the favourable provisions of a new citizenship law. The number of Crimean Tatars who still need to obtain Ukrainian citizenship has reached a record low; hundreds of thousands of them were able to acquire citizenship in the last decade.
  
• In The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, amendments to a citizenship law adopted in 2004 allowed long-term residents to regularize their citizenship status. The Ministry of Interior, in cooperation with UNHCR and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, organized a campaign to disseminate information on the procedures for residents to regularize their citizenship status. The campaign included dissemination of brochures and TV spots in the languages of the Albanian and Roma populations considered most at risk of statelessness.

In other areas of the world too there was some progress on issues of statelessness. In Estonia and Latvia, every year more of the large population of permanent residents rendered stateless by the collapse of the Soviet Union apply for naturalization and gain citizenship. In addition, children born to stateless parents are granted Estonian or Latvian nationality through a simple declaration. In the Russian Federation, as well as in most other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, citizenship legislation and bilateral dual-citizenship treaties are dealing with the consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. One exception: despite many interventions at the federal and local level, the situation of the Meskhetians of Krasnodar has not been settled. Most of the 17,000 members of this community in Russia have not gained citizenship and the majority are being resettled in the United States.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a new citizenship law enacted in November 2004 provides the legal basis to solve the nationality status of the Banyarwanda population. In December 2003, Ethiopia enacted a new citizenship law which should allow many ethnic Eritreans living in the country to reacquire the nationality they were deprived of in the late 1990s.

Despite these improvements, many protracted situations of statelessness remain, leaving millions of persons disenfranchized and with few rights. Some of these communities are the Biharis in Bangladesh; the Bidoons in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Saudi Arabia; some Kurds in Syria; and the Muslim populations of Myanmar, in particular those residing in or originating from northern Rakhine State. Thailand and many other Asian countries such as Brunei, Cambodia, Malaysia and Viet Nam also host populations with undetermined nationality. All are part of UNHCR's casebook for the coming years.

Box 1.3 Protection for victims of trafficking

Chapter 2 Safeguarding asylum