Statelessness
[21][22][23] According to the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, the Council of Europe Convention on the Avoidance of Statelessness in Relation to State Succession is the only treaty that aims to reduce this problem.
The term was coined in 1983 by the political scientist Jacques Leruez in his book L'Écosse, une nation sans État about the peculiar position of Scotland within the British state.
[citation needed] While statelessness in some form has existed continuously throughout human history, the international community has only been concerned with its eradication since the middle of the 20th century.
Historically, there is considerable correlation between those who would meet the modern definition of statelessness and those the contemporary ruling classes of the extant states would have deemed to be mere barbarians.
But even slaves in a monarchical state were often considered to have a legal status more desirable, at least from the perspective of the ruler, compared to those living outside the frontiers in tribal settings who were typically regarded as barbarians.
With the emergence of the concept of citizenship in the Greco-Roman world, the status of slaves and inhabitants of conquered territories during Classical antiquity became in some ways analogous to contemporary statelessness.
[45][46] In 1996, UNHCR was asked by the UNGA to actively promote accessions to the 1954 and 1961 conventions, as well as to provide interested states with technical and advisory services pertaining to the preparation and implementation of nationality legislation.
Concerned organisations such as the Open Society Justice Initiative and Refugees International have called for UNHCR to dedicate more human and financial resources to statelessness.
[51] UNHCR does not report refugee populations in its statelessness statistics to avoid double counting, which would affect the total number of "persons of concern".
Some of the largest populations of stateless persons are found in Algeria, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Estonia, India, Kenya, Latvia, Malaysia, Mauritania, Myanmar, Nepal, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Thailand.
One famous case is that of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived in Charles de Gaulle Airport in France for approximately 18 years after he was denied entry to the country.
The migration law provides protective measures for stateless persons, facilitating the guarantees of social inclusion and simplified naturalization for citizens without a homeland.
The legislation follows international conventions of respect for stateless persons and seeks to reduce the number of people in this situation, giving the right to request nationality.
In the case of Germany, in theory, for an individual to benefit from the visa exemption, the ICI must be issued under the terms of the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, and it must contain an authorization to return to Brunei with a sufficiently long period of validity.
[80] For much of its history, the Dominican Republic had a jus soli policy, meaning that all children born in the country, even to undocumented parents, were automatically given citizenship.
Interior Minister Alekos Papadopoulos stated that, since the article's introduction in 1955, 60,000 Greeks had lost their citizenship because of it, many of these people moved and adopted the nationality of another country.
Then, as a result of pressure from nongovernmental organizations and minority deputies, around 100 ethnic Turks made stateless under Article 19 received identity documents from Greek authorities in accordance with the 1954 U.N. Convention.
[citation needed] Eliana Rubashkyn, a transgender woman and refugee, became de facto stateless in 2013 after being detained for over eight months on the grounds that her appearance did not match her passport photo.
In 2012, the BBC reported on the case of Muhammad Idrees, who lived in Pakistan and had been held under Indian police control for approximately 13 years for overstaying his 15-day visa by 2–3 days after seeing his ill parents in 1999.
Practically speaking, they mostly hold North Korean citizenship (albeit meaningless in Japan, their country of residence) and may repatriate there, and under Japanese law, they are treated as foreign nationals and given the full privileges entitled to that class.
[110] In 1995, it was reported in the British parliament that the Al Sabah ruling family had deported 150,000 stateless Bedoon to refugee camps in the Kuwaiti desert near the Iraqi border with minimal water, insufficient food and no basic shelter, and that they were threatened with death if they returned to their homes in Kuwait City.
[121][125][126][127][128][129][108] The 1995 Human Rights Watch report stated: "The totality of the treatment of the Bedoons amounts to a policy of denationalization of native residents, relegating them to an apartheid-like existence in their own country.
"[120] British MP George Galloway stated: "Of all the human rights atrocities committed by the ruling family in Kuwait, the worst and the greatest is that against the people known as the Bedoons.
After Israel annexed East Jerusalem following the Six-Day War in 1967, Palestinians living there received, along with Israeli permanent residency status, the right to apply for citizenship.
[141] In 1994, Juan Mari Brás, a Puerto Rican lawyer and political historian, renounced his American citizenship before a consular agent in the United States Embassy of Venezuela.
He is a vocal critic of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and a public supporter of the Gülen movement, which the government blamed for the coup attempt.
The Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark clarified that people born to aliens on US soil were entitled to citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment.
In addition to UNHCR High Commissioner António Guterres, the letter was signed by Angelina Jolie, a UNHCR special envoy; Surin Pitsuwan, former secretary-general of ASEAN; Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu; Barbara Hendricks, a UNHCR honorary lifetime goodwill ambassador; Madeleine Albright, former US secretary of state; Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor of two UN international criminal tribunals; Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein and Louise Arbour, former UN high commissioners for human rights; and Dame Rosalyn Higgins, former president of the International Court of Justice, among others.
[180] In addition, a "global action plan to end statelessness" was launched following consultation with states, civil society, and international organisations.
It aims to provide institutional representation to stateless persons throughout the world through a network of volunteer human rights law practitioners who act as country representatives.
