Impacts of statelessness

KEY MESSAGES

• Nationality is the gateway through which people access rights and services, and is an important part of a person’s social identity.
• Statelessness impacts on every aspect of a person’s life through restricting access to basic rights and services. It can also have an acute impact on mental health. 
• Human rights affected by being stateless include an array of both civil and political rights and socioeconomic rights.
• Statelessness is both caused by discrimination, and causes further discrimination, in a self-perpetuating cycle. Stateless people can be a target for exploitation, persecution and even genocide, making statelessness a root cause of forced migration.
• The consequences of statelessness can create a ripple effect, affecting not just the individuals but also family members, their community, wider society and the international community.

IMPACTS OF STATELESSNESS

Nationality is the gateway through which people access rights and services in our state-centric world. It is also an important part of a person’s social identity, offering a place to call home and a community to belong to. The lack of nationality impacts on every aspect of a person’s life. Stateless people often face many challenges, including: entering or completing schooling; accessing healthcare services for preventative medicine or to treat an injury or illness; finding formal employment or signing a labour contract; buying or inheriting a house; buying land; registering a car or a business; obtaining a birth certificate, driving license, marriage certificate or even death certificate; opening a bank account or getting a loan; falling back on social security; and enjoying a pension. 

Moreover, in many situations, statelessness actually becomes a conduit or catalyst for human rights violations, be they perpetrated by the state or due to a vacuum of state protection. Being slated as outsiders, not just by their country but by all countries, make stateless people easy targets for victimisation within society as they may be seen as less deserving of compassion, protection and support. Discrimination is therefore at the root of statelessness. It not only causes statelessness, but is also a reason for further discrimination, playing out in a self-perpetuating cycle. Stateless people are often a target for hate speech, increased violence, or exploitative practices such as forced labour or extortion. Indeed, the treatment of stateless people can, in certain instances, amount to persecution and even genocide, as in the case of the Rohingya. Statelessness is also a root cause of forced displacement.

CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS

Political rights, such as the right to vote or stand for election and to perform certain public functions, are usually restricted to a country’s citizens, meaning that stateless people are excluded. Disenfranchisement is therefore an immediate and almost universal problem, limiting stateless people’s ability to influence the laws and policies that affect them or to call for reforms that would bring an end to their statelessness. This undoubtedly also contributes to the invisibility of and lack of attention to the problem of statelessness in general, and its resultant manifestation and growth over generations. 

Other civil rights are also affected, including the right to free movement, the right to (re)enter and reside in your own country, and the right to liberty and security. As a stateless person, international travel is almost inconceivable due to lack of documentation, unless by illicit – and dangerous – means, meaning that stateless people are also at a higher risk of being trafficked. Travel within their country can also be difficult due to the person’s precarious legal status or the inability to provide proof of identity if stopped at a security checkpoint or in a random check by the police. Often, even if in possession of a stateless person’s travel document, migration can be difficult and stateless people face increased risk of questioning, denial of entry, or detention at the border, and can be prevented from re-entering their own country. Stateless people are at a higher risk of prolonged, arbitrary detention, even within their home country. A stateless person is highly vulnerable to be “simply left to languish for months and years…without any authority taking an active interest in his fate and well-being”. This is largely because immigration systems and detention regimes do not have appropriate procedures in place to identify statelessness and to protect stateless people; and stateless people do not have any country to be deported to, so may face being detained indefinitely.

Where a stateless person wants to assert their rights, or where they have become a victim of crime or exploitation, their statelessness can also stand in the way of getting help from the authorities or finding their way to a court. Their complaint may be readily dismissed or ignored, and they are powerless to take a stand against this due to their status of disenfranchisement. Stateless people live in a permanent condition of insecurity, affecting freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. Stateless activists are particularly at risk – exposing themselves through engaging in activism can lead to a higher risk of reprisal. 

IMPACT ON FAMILY, COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY

The consequences of statelessness can create a ripple effect, affecting not just the individuals but also family members, their community, wider society and the international community. Statelessness of a single family member can create problems for all due to the difficulties it causes and the tension and stress that can ensue. A mother who holds nationality, but whose son is stateless, worries that he will never have a family of his own because he is condemned to a life without nationality, and to pass this on to his own children. The lack of ability to gain formal qualifications or access the labour market can not only result in stateless people being unable to provide for family members, but affects their participation in and contribution towards society. 

A country in which a whole community has been excluded, disenfranchised, stigmatised and even vilified through the denial of nationality may face social tensions that affect both stateless people and citizens alike. Mounting tensions between the “in” group and those portrayed as outsiders can also fuel conflict. Where conflict arises or where stateless people face such severe restrictions or violations of their fundamental rights that they are forced to seek sanctuary elsewhere, their displacement becomes a concern for the receiving country and the international community as a whole. 

[Last updated: December 2023]

Cover image by Greg Constantine