News

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is urging Governments worldwide to pay urgent attention to the plight of millions of stateless people and to follow a set of recommendations the organization has issued today to ensure their coverage in the COVID-19 response.

In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, we are all vulnerable. The virus has shown that it does not discriminate – but many refugees, those forcibly displaced, the stateless and migrants are at heightened risk.

An estimated 50,000 stateless people in Uzbekistan are set to acquire citizenship following the passing of a new law in the country.

Five years since the adoption of the Abidjan Declaration on the Eradication of Statelessness by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency is lauding progress and urging a redoubling of efforts. This is to ensure everyone in the region has a nationality and benefits from the rights of citizenship.

North Macedonia acceded to the 1961 Statelessness Convention on Friday 3rd January, making it among the first countries to do so since the High-Level Segment on Statelessness held in Geneva in October 2019.

A new law in Tajikistan allows foreign nationals and stateless people irregularly residing in the country to regularise their stay, by obtaining residence permits which will also enable them after three years to apply for Tajik citizenship.

Joining global efforts to prevent statelessness, Kazakhstan has amended its Code on Marriage and Family so as to ensure that all children born in the country are registered at birth and issued birth certificates, regardless of the legal status of their parents.

Malta decides to join global efforts to end statelessness by 2024 after it acceded to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons on 11 December 2019.

In a historic moment in the global fight against statelessness, more than 85 governments, civil society and international and regional organizations have this week pledged hundreds of new commitments to end statelessness, a major cause of human rights deprivations for millions of people worldwide

A lawyer whose work has supported the efforts of the Kyrgyz Republic in becoming the first country in the world to end statelessness has been selected as the 2019 winner of the UN Refugee Agency’s Nansen Refugee Award.

Actress and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett interviews statelessness activist Maha Mamo about her 30-year-push to belong.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned today that recent advances in the battle to end statelessness were being imperiled by a rise in damaging forms of nationalism.