Uzbekistan recently passed a law to allow over 50,000 stateless people currently living within its borders to apply for citizenship. The law was introduced by the state’s senate in February 2020 and came into effect in April 2020. It offers a simplified naturalisation process, granting citizenship status to all those who previously held permanent residency in Uzbekistan acquired before 1 January 1995.
The law comes a year after neighbouring Kyrgyzstan fully eradicated statelessness by granting birth certificates and passports to the last 50 stateless people in its territory. Yasuko Oda, the UNHCR Representative for Central Asia, welcomes the new legislation with hope that other states in the region will follow suit and also put an end to the issue of statelessness.
THE RIGHT TO NATIONALITY IN INTERNATIONAL LAW
Statelessness is defined in the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, which defines a stateless person as someone who is “not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”. The right to nationality is a fundamental human right codified in a series of international treaties, and states party to each legal instrument have a duty to comply with their obligations related to granting and loss of nationality.
The International Observatory of Human Rights, an independent non-governmental organisation, reported that there are well over 90,000 stateless people in Uzbekistan, reflecting a longstanding issue in a post-Soviet world. The issue of statelessness emerged as a consequence of the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent formation of new states and national borders. Thirty years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the obliteration of the Soviet nationality, the international community still finds thousands of people left stateless. Many among them are ethnic minorities. A total of nearly 200,000 stateless individuals are thought to be located in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a regional organisation formed after the Soviet dissolution; nearly half of them likely live in Russia alone.
However, this issue is not exclusive to CIS member states. Many people living in post-Soviet nations that acceded to the European Union also face statelessness. Despite some states like Latvia taking positive steps to eradicate child statelessness by granting automatic citizenship to children of “non-citizens,” the number of stateless people in Latviahas reached record highs. The latest figures show that around 200,000 individuals without citizenship live within the Latvian borders, most of whom identify as members of the Russian ethnic minority. In Estonia, UNHCR reports that around 47,000 people have “undetermined citizenship” in situ, which means they were citizens of the Soviet Union who became stateless as a result of national independence even though they still reside in the land of their birth.
THE INTERNATIONAL BREADTH OF STATELESSNESS
International numbers of stateless people are even more striking. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warns that a total of 12 million people are stateless around the world. This demographic faces a high risk of human rights violations, from the right to suffrage to the rights to schooling, legal employment, and access to healthcare. Even more so, stateless individuals are exposed to a higher risk of discriminatory practices, such as human trafficking, labour, and sexual exploitation.
In Europe alone there are around 600,000 people lacking nationality or identity documents, thereby deprived of their ability to enjoy many human rights. Similarly, in Africa, the issue of statelessness persists as a result of the continent's colonial past.
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS
In an effort to combat the issue, UNHCR launched a campaign aiming to end statelessness internationally by 2024. The #IBELONG campaign proposes 10 actions states should take depending on the specific causes and gravity of statelessness within their jurisdiction. For example, states should ensure that no child is born stateless and should systematically issue nationality documentation to those entitled.
In May 2020, UNHCR published a report titled “High-Level Segment on Statelessness: Results and Highlights”.Among the campaign’s main achievements thus far is a total of 360 pledges—both by states and non-governmental organisations—in accordance with the listed actions associated with #IBELONG. Some of these pledges have already been fulfilled—for instance, through the new legislation in Uzbekistan and similar initiatives in other countries around the world.
In light of these developments, the Commissioner of UNHCR, Filippo Grandi, acknowledged the success of the campaign and expressed his hope for progress yet to come in eradicating statelessness around the globe.
Victoria is a full-time law student and part-time market intelligence research assistant. She was born and raised in Moldova shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. From an early age, she hoped of living the "democratic dream" of the West. She pursued a university degree in the UK and now holds an MA in International Relations and Sociology awarded by the University of Aberdeen. She is currently studying the accelerated LL.B in Aberdeen. Following graduation she intends on undertaking a master's degree and pursuing a career in international law.