About the Fund
Statelessness denies millions basic rights. The Global Statelessness Fund supports efforts to end it through grants and advocacy.
About the Global Statelessness Fund
Statelessness – being denied any nationality – is an extreme form of exclusion and a growing global problem. Stateless people are routinely denied fundamental human rights to education, healthcare, housing, employment, social protection, family life, documentation, free movement, political participation, and access to justice.
The Global Statelessness Fund is an initiative co-created by leaders and activists impacted by statelessness, civil society organizations, and donors. We believe that responses to statelessness should be led by lived experience to address the real needs of affected communities and lend urgency to the need for change. To catalyze this change the Fund strengthens individual and collective action through participatory flexible transformative grant-making.
As a human rights fund, we fund groups and activists who are impacted by statelessness, provide accompaniment and capacity development support, and collaborate with grantees and other movements to implement advocacy initiatives that strengthen partnerships in the elimination of statelessness and discriminatory nationality laws.
Action for Change
The Global Statelessness Fund believes that the growing problem of statelessness can be most effectively addressed by bringing increased resources directly to people impacted by statelessness and the organizations they lead, supporting their efforts to advocate, organize, educate, and mobilize to advance the rights of stateless individuals and communities.
So far, the Fund has identified the following areas of work and opportunities for change within the stateless community.
Strategic litigation
Our grantees identify and pursue legal cases as a part of their strategy to promote equal nationality rights. This includes groups in East Africa that aim to secure official recognition of communities via the elimination of vetting processes that obstruct access to ID cards, as well as networks in South Asia that collaborate with government officials and lawmakers to change discriminatory citizenship laws.
Campaigning & advocacy
Impacted person-led groups spearhead the efforts to combat statelessness worldwide. The Global Statelessness Fund will support campaigns to advance gender-equal nationality rights and elimination of discriminatory citizenship law.
Community engagement
Our grantees create and foster community and visibility around statelessness issues. These include a European organization that hosts an online forum on statelessness issues and creates a safe space for discussions on statelessness and citizenship rights and Roma Rights Groups which provide important community support to challenge stereotypes and racism.
Provision of essential services
Prospective grantees include organizations that identify gaps in services for stateless people and seek to remedy these situations. These include hotlines for stateless people who couldn’t register for vaccine appointments due to lack of documentation, as well as organizations that provide crucial education services and literacy training to stateless children
Legal Support
The Fund has identified groups that provide legal support to stateless communities to help navigate bureaucratic systems and acquire citizenship when possible. These organizations include an initiative in the Middle East that has set up a peer-support group for stateless people to pursue their legal issues collectively and share knowledge, an organization that provides outreach and legal support to assist the hundreds of thousands of stateless persons in their country who can potentially acquire citizenship with the changing legislation, and a team of paralegals in South Asia providing legal aid to camp-dwelling formerly stateless persons in their country to help obtain their legal identity documents.
Education & awareness raising
Impacted person-led groups have been raising awareness and providing educational material and outlets on statelessness. Among others, the Fund has identified initiatives that cover Rohingya-related news and events and update the international community.
Our reach
Statelessness is a multifaceted issue caused and perpetuated by discrimination on various grounds such as race, ethnicity, gender, disability, and socio-economic status. The Fund recognizes the intersectional nature of statelessness and aims to support individuals and groups with different yet interrelated and complementary areas of focus that aim to combat statelessness and advocate for equal nationality rights.
Women
Children
Childhood statelessness is one of the main factors of statelessness globally. Stateless children are often vulnerable and marginalized with limited access to their rights. The Fund supports organizations that aim to eliminate childhood statelessness and provide essential services to stateless children. These organizations offer alternative non-formal education and literacy training to stateless children and aim to reduce childhood statelessness by using digital innovations to simplify the birth registration processes.
Refugees & Migrants
Statelessness and forced migration have close causal links and being stateless poses additional challenges and vulnerabilities to migrants. The Fund supports refugee & migrant rights organizations that were established by and advocate for stateless groups.
Minorities
Racial, ethnic, and religious discrimination against minorities is a major driver of statelessness. Additionally, statelessness exacerbates the difficulties that minorities face. The Global Statelessness Fund connects with and supports impacted person-led organizations advocating for equal nationality rights for minorities.
Our organization truly believes that by working together, we can save more lives than ever before.