Stateless Persons and the Question of Rights
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12220 |
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| Author | Johanna K. Schenner |
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
Stateless Persons and the Question of Rights
Johanna K. Schenner
University of Sheffield,
The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
views of UNHCR.
Abstract
On 4 November 2014, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched the worldwide campaign to put
an end to statelessness within the time frame of the next ten years. Therefore, according to the UNHCR reasoning no persons
should be affected by statelessness in 2024. The launch of the campaign followed the Global Forum on Statelessness in Sep-
tember 2014 that aimed at highlighting the implications of statelessness of concerned persons and to simultaneously raise
awareness (Guardian, 2014). In an era when nation states have been in existence for over 300 years and citizenship being
granted to nationals by states either by Right of the Soil (jus soli) or by Right of the Blood (jus sanguinis), the condition of
statelessness comes as a surprise to many persons disposing of citizenship. The legal status of possessing citizenship is gener-
ally taken for granted. In my view, the existence of stateless people points to weaknesses in current national legal rights
regimes and bears great risks of both affected persons and society.
1. The Concept of Statelessness and
Consequences for Persons Affect by this Condition
In an era when democracy is the most prominent form of
political regime throughout the world (Freedom House Index,
2014) –leaving aside discussions on democratic intensities of
countries –and citizenship appears pervasive, the questions
what statelessness actually means, why it exists and what it
has to tell us have yet to be answered. Article 1 of the 1954
lates that a stateless person is ‘a person who is not considered
as a national by any State under the Operation of its law’
(UNHCR, 1954). As such, statelessness amounts to the depriva-
tion of either citizenship or nationality. The difference
between citizenship and nationality lies in citizenship being
granted by the law of a given state while nationality stipulates
the membership of a particular nation. Besides depriving indi-
viduals of a sense of national affiliation, the often assumed
direct legal bond between the individual and the state is bro-
ken in many cases (UNHCR, 2014a). In their day-to-day lives,
stateless persons are most likely to encounter a significant
number of challenges such as restricted or no access at all to
education, health care and property rights among many oth-
ers things. Moreover, stateless persons are more prone than
citizens to be victims of human trafficking through unscrupu-
lous business agents and to other unlawful treatment by
states. Finally, stateless persons are highly likely to be margin-
alized resulting in both strains within societies and instability
at an international level (UNHCR, 2014c).
2. Causes of Statelessness
Several reasons exist that may cause statelessness. These
causes include the absence of birth registration, renuncia-
tion (when a person gives up citizenship), denationalization
(when a state revokes a person’s citizenship), marriage laws
(in some countries, women are required to renounce their
own citizenship in order to marry a national of that particu-
lar country; these women can find themselves deprived of
citizenship during the time of renouncing their own citizen-
ship and applying/acquiring the new one; therefore, they
face a high risk of becoming stateless) and discrimination
(UNHCR and IPU, 2005). However, the vast majority of
today’s stateless persons are victims of forced displacement
and as such, cannot enjoy any kind of legal protection by
their original state. In addition, the redefinition of state
boundaries may leave residents of such newly occupied ter-
ritories denied their former citizenship even as they are not
afforded the new state’s citizenship. The ongoing Syrian civil
war, the precarious situation in the Central African Republic,
in Eastern Ukraine and in Iraq led to significant levels of
forced displacement of persons inside or outside of their
country’s boundaries. Less publicized conflicts of smaller
magnitude such as in Central America resulting in an influx
of child refugees into North America should also not be
overlooked even if the number of displaced persons is smal-
ler than in the before mentioned conflicts.
3. Conventions Addressing Statelessness and
Current Right Regimes
It is generally assumed that persons should have rights (see
international law and treaties, the 1948 Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, the 1954 Statelessness Convention and the
1966 International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights);
however, stateless persons prove this general assumption to
be wrong and expose the one way road between citizenship
and rights: rights are available due to the possession of a citi-
©2015 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2016) 7:1 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12220
Global Policy Volume 7 . Issue 1 . February 2016
122
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