About the Issue

Find out more about statelessness and the groups who are working to address the issue.

What is statelessness?

Being stateless means that no country considers you as their citizen.

Statelessness is an extreme form of exclusion and a growing global problem. It is caused by one or multiple forms of discrimination and leads to a wide range of human rights violations. Stateless people struggle to access their fundamental rights to education, healthcare, housing, employment, social protection, family life, documentation, free movement, political participation, and access to justice.

Today, more than 15 million people worldwide are stateless and tens of millions are at risk of statelessness because of discriminatory nationality and citizenship laws.

Powered by those with lived experience of statelessness and discriminatory nationality laws, the Global Statelessness Fund is working towards change.

Whether they have funding or not, people with lived experience of statelessness are always advocating for their cause. When there is meaningful support, it makes all the difference.

Grantee of the Global Statelessness Fund

Who is considered an impacted person ?

The Global Statelessness Fund was founded to bring increased resources directly to people impacted by statelessness and discriminatory nationality laws, and their organizations.

We adopt an inclusive approach because we recognize that the different ways in which people are affected by statelessness brings forth different and complementary solutions to this pressing issue. As such, we consider the following to be impacted groups and prioritize grantmaking to organizations led by them.

Directly impacted: Individuals who are stateless or who face discrimination in accessing nationality or transmitting nationality to their children or spouse, which heightens their risk of statelessness.
Indirectly impacted: Individuals who belong to communities disproportionately impacted by statelessness and discriminatory nationality laws, even though they themselves are not stateless.
Legacy impacted: Individuals who were previously stateless or impacted by discriminatory nationality laws who have since resolved their situation.
At-risk impacted: Individuals who belong to communities whose nationality is precarious and at risk due to discriminatory or arbitrary nationality laws.

Causes & effects of statelessness

Statelessness intersects with many, if not all, of the biggest global challenges we face. At the Global Statelessness Fund, we recognize the intersectional nature of this issue and aim to support individuals and groups with different yet interrelated and complementary areas of focus.

Around the world, hundreds of people impacted by statelessness and discriminatory nationality laws have self-organized to serve their communities, while also fighting to place the following issues and more on the national agendas and to take them to the international community.

Human rights: Caused by deprivation of the right to nationality, statelessness is the basis for other rights violations due to structural discrimination and exclusion.
Development: Stateless people and those without nationality in their homeland are more likely to be left behind, with few political incentives (and often strong disincentives) for policymakers to invest in infrastructure for stateless communities.
Migration: Many stateless people are forcibly displaced and many displaced people become stateless.
Discrimination: An estimated 75% of stateless people belong to minority communities. Disabled people, LGBTQI+ people, and those of migrant heritage are disproportionately impacted by statelessness.
Democracy & rule of law: Citizenship stripping (leading to statelessness) is a crude technology of disenfranchisement often used by authoritarian regimes, which undermines equal citizenship. Additionally, discriminatory nationality laws and practices undermine core democratic principles of equal citizenship and equality before the law.
Peace & conflict: Statelessness can be caused by conflicts and stateless communities are often trapped in conflict settings as they cannot move freely in their own country or safely cross borders.
Access to justice: The rights of stateless people and those denied nationality in their homeland are often violated with impunity, as statelessness serves as an often-insurmountable barrier to access to justice.
Digitalization & data governance: The growing digitalization of identity systems is perpetuating exclusion amongst minority groups, while heightening the cost of such exclusion.
Women’s rights: Stateless women and girls, as well as those impacted by discriminatory nationality, laws face compounding marginalization, are at increased risk of gender-based violence, and encounter obstacles to accessing justice due to their vulnerable status. face additional marginalization and have less protection from gender-based violence due to fears of accessing the authorities. In 24 countries women cannot pass their nationality to their child on an equal basis as men, which can leave children stateless. Gender discrimination in nationality laws perpetuates root causes of gender based violence, while rendering affected women and girls at higher risk of human trafficking and early/forced marriage. At their core, gender-discriminatory nationality laws undermine women’s status as equal citizens and their equality in the family.
Child rights: Stateless children and those impacted by discriminatory nationality laws are deprived of safe and secure childhoods and often denied equal access to education and the ability to reach their full potential.
Climate justice: Many stateless communities are overexposed to the impacts of climate change, while ’sinking islands’ can create new statelessness situations en masse.

Visit our explainer page to find out more about how climate change and statelessness intersect.