Statelessness

Statelessness is the status of those people who are not legally recognized as nationals of any state. Statelessness first emerged as an international concern with the reordering of the international state system following the First World War, and gained greater attention following the Second World War. The United Nations adopted specific treaties on the protection of stateless persons and on the reduction of statelessness, as well as including the right to a nationality within the major human rights conventions. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has taken up its mandate for stateless persons with increasing seriousness in the twenty-first century. Outstanding challenges relate to the definition of stateless person – and the consequent difficulty of assessing the number of stateless persons, statelessness created by arbitrary deprivation and denial of nationality, and discrimination in access to nationality on the grounds of race, ethnicity, or religion.