Support the Global Alliance to End Statelessness

London / Beirut

11 October 2024

Support the Global Alliance to End Statelessness

Many millions of people worldwide are stateless and have no rights; not considered citizens by any country. More than a billion people are unable to prove their identity and are therefore deprived of fundamental human rights: legal protection or even recognition, access to healthcare, social protection, employment and education. They form a human rights crisis for which there is a solution, since the right to a nationality is a fundamental human right.

Hawiati, the Middle East and North Africa Statelessness Network, Salam for Democracy and Human Rights (SALAM DHR) and Rights Realization Centre (RRC) join ten states, intergovernmental bodies (IGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) in inviting those able to speak about those deprived of rights; to call for their recognition and for states worldwide to end persistent – yet solvable – statelessness, including by ending practices such as stripping of citizenship, not issuing birth, death or other state-certificates and not falsifying documents issued by the state.

We invite you to join the Global Alliance to End Statelessness, whose founders will formally launch the initiative in Geneva on 14 October 2024, at 10-12:00 Central European Time (CET). The event can be viewed online at: https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1i/k1ilwrkzfh

According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2022 there were at least 4.4 million stateless persons, perhaps as many as 12 million, in every region of the world, of whom around one-third UNHCR estimated to be children. In 2017, the World Bank estimated that more than 1.1 billion people were “unable to prove their identity and therefore lack access to vital services including healthcare, social protection, education and finance.” According to UNHCR, “Statelessness may occur for a variety of reasons, including discrimination against particular ethnic or religious groups or on the basis of gender; the emergence of new States and transfers between existing States; and conflict of nationality laws.”

Some states exclude entire communities from citizenship and large scale displacement or changing state formation has resulted in thousands losing their citizenship. Echoing discriminatory practices in Europe in the late 1930s some states have arbitrarily stripped people or members of a specific community of citizenship. Gender discrimination in around 24 other states prevents women from being able to confer citizenship upon their children on equal basis with men, which is a primary cause of statelessness. Moreover, stateless persons are often invisible in national statistical exercises and around half of countries in the world do not report statistics on statelessness.

As in other parts of the world, statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is little known or understood outside the region and, like elsewhere, grossly under-reported. Hawiati’s Coordinators have noted that millions of Palestinians, who have lacked nationality since being expelled from their homes in 1948 at the creation of the Israeli state and in subsequent years, with the encroaching occupation of the West Bank, are the largest stateless population in the region. Ethnic and religious discrimination deprives members of certain minority groups of citizenship, including Kurds of Syria, black Mauritanians and Shia opposition figures in Bahrain. Those whose ancestors did not register during key population surveys as states were established in the region sometimes find themselves excluded from contemporary citizenship. This is the experience of many Bedouin in Lebanon and the Bidoon in the Gulf, notably in Kuwait.

The MENA region accounts for almost half of the countries in the world where gender discriminatory nationality laws (GDNL) prevent mothers from being able to pass their citizenship onto their children on an equal basis with fathers, while laws discriminate on the basis of religion, race, and disability.

All MENA states lack specific legal provisions for the identification and/or protection of stateless people: there is no legal status for a ‘stateless person’ and most states do not consider nationality issues to be under the jurisdiction of national courts and few MENA governments have signed up to the United Nations’ 1954 and/or 1961 Statelessness Conventions, With exceptions in this respect in North Africa, whose states are something of a model for adherence to international standards in nationality legislation and practice.

In part as a result of UNHCR’s 2014-2024 #IBelong campaign, states in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America resolved protracted situations of statelessness. The Global Alliance to End Statelessness continues, renews and revitalises the previous decade’s efforts.

While UNHCR hosts its Secretariat, the Advisory Committee mandated to be in place for three years, comprises a global first: a joint body consisting, equally, of state, intergovernmental organisations and civil society organisations. Accordingly, Salam for Democracy and Human Rights (Salam DHR) sits on the Committee as an equal to the Government of the United States of America and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), amongst a total of 13 members.

In order to disseminate knowledge about statelessness, and to advance a global discourse that fosters policies to end the practice, the Global Alliance to End Statelessness has created a membership. At the time of writing, it comprises 86 members, including:

10 Governments
10 Inter-governmental Organisations
3 UN Agencies
13 Stateless-led Organisations
39 Civil Society Organizations
5 Academias
4 Faith-based Organisations
1 Inter-parliamentary Organisation
1 ‘Other’

Hawiati is a member; Rights Realization Centre has applied to be a member. We urge our partner organisations; friends and colleagues in academia and states to join this initiative.

Join us in welcoming the formal announcement of the creation of the Global Alliance to End Statelessness on 14 October 2024, at 10:00 CET, including via social media, on X, LinkedIn and Facebook.

For SALAM DHR: Jawad Fairooz @JawadFairooz +447449926577 (English, Arabic)
For Hawiati: Zahra al-Barazi @Hawiati_MENA (English, French, Welsh, Arabic)
For RRC: Drewery Dyke +447800989221 (English, Persian)

¹ The United Nations’ Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the international body mandated to assist the Palestinian community, states that some 5.9 million Palestine refugees are eligible for its services. A European Union source reported an estimated 517 000 stateless Kurds in Syria prior to 2011; . UNHCR’s ‘Refugee Data’ mobile application (app) cited 160,000 in October 2024. According to the Ana Bahraini website, 434 Bahraini remain stripped of their nationality. UNHCR’s app records, in October 2024, 92,000 stateless persons in Kuwait and 70,000 in Saudi Arabia. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have both deprived citizens of their nationality and expelled them.