Stateless person
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A stateless person is someone with no citizenship or nationality. It may be because the state that gave their previous nationality has ceased to exist and there is no successor state, or their nationality has been repudiated by their own state, effectively making them refugees. People may also be stateless if they are members of a group which is denied citizen status in the country on whose territory they are born, if they are born in disputed territories, if they are born in an area ruled by an entity whose independence is not internationally recognized, or if they are born on territory over which no modern state claims sovereignty.
Individuals may also become stateless voluntarily, by formally renouncing their citizenship while on foreign soil; however, not all states recognize such renunciations on the part of their citizens. Often, depending on the specific laws of the countries involved, one may not renounce a citizenship unless one is a dual citizen and can show citizenship in a country other than that of the undesired citizenship. Consulates do not want to deal with the complications associated with statelessness if they can avoid it. However, consular officials are unlikely to be familiar with all citizenship laws of all countries, so there still can be situations where statelessness might arise. For example, children born outside Canada to a Canadian parent or parents are, under certain circumstances, required to establish Canadian residency by age 28 or lose Canadian citizenship. If such a person held dual citizenship and, as a young adult, renounced the second citizenship on the strength of his or her Canadian passport, and then subsequently failed to establish the required Canadian residency, he or she could end up stateless.
Some areas are home to stateless persons. In some cases, such as that of ethnic Russians in Latvia, conditions for citizenship may be problematic or difficult to satisfy. In some enclave areas, such as the FARC-ruled areas of Colombia, and parts of Sudan and Afghanistan, people may have no practical contact with a potentially passport-issuing state which nominally claims sovereignty over them.
While stateless persons were more common before the 20th century, when many states were somewhat fragile entities, on September 20, 1954 the United Nations adopted the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons: an active policy to prevent people becoming or remaining stateless. States which have ratified the Convention are bound to give stateless persons rights similar to those granted aliens of comparable status. Despite this, there are still Kashmiri, Kurdish, Palestinian and Sahrawi refugees who claim asylum due to statelessness, for example.
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[edit] De facto statelessness
Cases of de facto statelessness have arisen due to historical provisions of British nationality law which led to cases where people have had a British passport without right of abode in the United Kingdom. Those with such status who did not have citizenship or residence rights in any other country were effectively stateless despite holding British nationality. Examples of this include ethnic Indians in Hong Kong after the turnover to the People's Republic of China in 1997.
Effective 30 April 2003, as part of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 the United Kingdom gave most British nationals without any other citizenship the right to register as full British citizens if they wish and has hence resolved most of the British cases of effective statelessness. A similar case can be seen in illegal aliens who cannot be expelled due to specific provisions (health issues, stateless persons who by definition cannot be expelled to their "original country", refugees who are not accepted by their original state, etc.): they thus live in a judicial no man's land.
[edit] In popular culture
A slightly tragicomic portrayal of this condition is the film The Terminal, in which a man is forced to live in an airport due to his unrecognized citizenship status (his homeland has ceased to exist while he was in transit). This story was inspired in part on the real-life story of Merhan Karimi Nasseri, who spent almost two decades in the Charles de Gaulle Airport, originally due to conflicts with French law (he refused to claim being an Iranian refugee) plus also the fact he was not welcome in his countries of origin (Iran and Belgium) or his destination (the United Kingdom). He was eventually granted and served with French immigration documents, but subsequently refused to leave the building.
[edit] Famous stateless/formerly stateless people
[edit] See also
- 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons
- 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness
- Al-Kateb v Godwin
- Bidun
- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
- Nansen passport
- Denaturalization
- Refugees and refugee law
- Statelessness
- The Man Without a Country
[edit] External links
- UNHCR page on prevention and reduction of statelessness and protection of stateless persons - background information, tools and news From UNHCR website
- UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (full text)
- Full list of (and links to) treaties on Stateless persons from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website
- Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation
- British nationality - provisions for reducing statelessness
