Resolving Issues of Statelessness by Addressing Discriminatory Practices

To be stripped of citizenship is to be stripped of worldliness. It is like returning to a wilderness as cavemen or savages where people could live and die without leaving any trace.

- Hannah Arendt

The right to a nationality is a human right as declared in Article 15 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality." Yet some 4.3 million people in the world lack proof of legal identity. This identification gap"" is a serious obstacle to participation in political, economic and social life. Without a secure and trustworthy way to prove their identity, a person may be unable to exercise the range of human rights set out in international laws and conventions.

Stateless people are found in all parts of the globe - Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas-entire communities, new-born babies, children, couples and older people. Their one common curse, the lack of any nationality, deprives them of rights that the majority of the global population takes for granted. Often, they are excluded from cradle to grave-being denied a legal identity when they are born, access to education, health care, marriage and job opportunities during their lifetime and even the dignity of an official burial and a death certificate when they die.

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