The 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons contains a widely accepted definition of statelessness. Therein a stateless person is defined as someone “who is not considered as a national by any State under operation of its law.” The phrase “under operation of its law” is of key importance. It means that the concept of nationality is treated as a legal concept rather than a natural one. In other words, a person can factually and circumstantially belong to a country (state), being rooted there, but unless the authorities in that state legally recognise that bond the person may effectively be stateless. Moreover, the bond needs to involve equal citizenship rights and obligations. There are various sub-citizenships wherein a state recognizes a bond between itself and its members but does not allow some members to access equal rights that are essential to defining citizenship/nationality. A person without such equal rights, being a “national” in name only, may also be stateless.
Simply put, a stateless person does not have any country/state that legally recognises him or her as their own equal member. On the one hand, it may sound romantic to some for a person to be free from belonging to a state. In reality, rights derive from how a person legally belongs to their respective state. Without that belonging, the person is deprived of rights, even the most basic ones. This means serious harm to the person and, according to the US Supreme Court, amounts to “a form of punishment more primitive than torture”. Given the arbitrary nature of how mass statelessness is caused, tied to irrationality of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination, the phenomenon undermines nation-state model of governance and the fundamental values on which it is supposed to be built.
There are international conventions meant to address statelessness, but they lack monitoring and enforcement mechanisms (a common problem for international law). Some countries are not yet signatories to the relevant conventions, while others have not ratified them. International attention in addressing statelessness remains insufficient. Power imbalances between state actors that cause statelessness and the disempowered stateless people continue to prejudice information and narratives on statelessness. Awareness of statelessness remains low, while confounding of statelessness terminology and data help state actors avoid accountability.
