Stateless persons
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 3.687 million | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Asia and the Pacific | 1.563 million |
| Africa | 1.021 million |
| Europe | 592,151 |
| Middle East and North Africa | 374,237 |
| Americas | 136,585 |
In international law, statelessness is the lack of citizenship. A stateless person is someone who is "not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law". Some stateless persons are also refugees. However, not all refugees are stateless, and many persons who are stateless have never crossed an international border.
Most people belonging to a stateless nation, despite lacking their own nation state, nonetheless hold citizenship in one or more countries, in some cases effectively as second-class citizens.
Conflicting nationality laws are one of numerous causes of statelessness. Nationality is usually acquired through one of two modes:
Today, many nations apply a combination of the two systems.
Although many states allow the acquisition of nationality through parental descent irrespective of where the child is born, many do not allow female citizens to confer nationality to their children. There are 27 countries in the world that do not grant equal rights to women in passing on their nationality. This can result in statelessness when the father is stateless, unknown, or otherwise unable to confer nationality. There have, however, been recent changes in favor of gender neutrality in nationality laws, including successful reform processes in Algeria, Morocco, and Senegal that may inform change elsewhere. For example, Algeria amended its nationality code to repeal the limitations on mothers’ ability to confer nationality on their children, replacing them with an overarching provision granting Algerian nationality to all children born in or outside Algeria to an Algerian mother or father. Moreover, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women prohibits sex-based discrimination in the conferral of nationality.
An important measure to prevent statelessness at birth provides nationality to children born in a territory who would otherwise be stateless. This norm is stipulated in the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness; appears in several regional human rights treaties, including the American Convention on Human Rights, the European Convention on Nationality, and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child; and is implicit in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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