News and stories
UNHCR hails accessions to Statelessness conventions in West Africa
Mali and Sierra Leone step up prevention from cradle to grave.
The importance of being registered
The indigenous Ngöbe Bugle people live a cross border life in their ancestral territories straddling Costa Rica and Panama. This traditional lifestyle contributed to a risk of becoming stateless…
“I will now be able to go to school!”
A UNHCR program in Benin has given over 1000 birth certificates to children providing the opportunity to go to school and access basic social services for the first time.
I am Here, I Belong
UNHCR report on the urgent need to end childhood statelessness.
Italy joins top league of countries reducing statelessness
Italy accedes to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
IPU Conference
MPs from 39 countries met recently in South Africa to discuss how they can work together to end statelessness.
Thousands of stateless people given nationality in Thailand
The UN Refugee Agency has welcomed an announcement by the Royal Thai Government that more than 18,000 stateless people have been granted nationality in Thailand in the last three years.
“I am a normal human being”
“Even though I don’t have nationality, I am a normal human being. I exist. I want everybody to know that if someone has no nationality, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
Birth certificates to prevent statelessness
When baby Idrees’ house was destroyed in Syria, his family lost everything except for what was kept inside his grandmother’s purse.
“I feel like I am not a human being. I feel empty.”
For some, being stateless leaves them open to abuse.
“Try to understand our lives. We are also human beings.”
Kavita, 22, is from Malaysia and wants to be an art teacher. She has been offered jobs at schools but cannot take them because she is stateless.
“Statelessness makes you feel like an empty shell”
“Statelessness give you a sense of emptiness that no one can understand. Statelessness makes you feel like an empty shell.”