Statelessness
How millions of people around the world lack citizenship in any country, why statelessness occurs, and the legal and humanitarian frameworks meant to address it.
Invisible People
A stateless person is someone who is not recognized as a citizen by any country. UNHCR estimates at least 4.4 million stateless people worldwide, though the true number is likely much higher because many are uncounted. Statelessness strips people of the rights that citizenship provides: the right to vote, work legally, own property, access education and healthcare, marry, open a bank account, or travel freely. As Hannah Arendt observed, stateless people lack 'the right to have rights.'
Statelessness has multiple causes. Discriminatory nationality laws may exclude people based on ethnicity, religion, or gender. State succession, when countries dissolve or borders change, can leave populations without citizenship, as happened across the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Gaps between nationality laws can leave children born to parents from different countries stateless if neither country grants citizenship. Arbitrary deprivation of nationality, as Myanmar did to the Rohingya, is used as a tool of persecution.
