The world's refugee population has more than doubled over the past decade. Statelessness is on the rise. As the first group of stateless refugees emerges from Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, countries around the world will once again be forced to reckon with their policies about refugees.A ‘stateless person’ is defined by the United Nations as someone who is not recognised as ‘a national’ by any state under ‘the operation of its law’.
The recent growth in statelessness is rooted in the way people are rendered stateless: refugees are less often being stopped at borders, so governments are using this to justify policies that cast out refugees – leaving them without a safe home to return to and no destination to welcome them. Statelessness is the destiny of many refugees.
Conferred in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to a state is an ironclad human right that cannot be taken away or changed ‘arbitrarily’.
