Report: I am Here, I Belong: the Urgent Need to End Childhood Statelessness
UNHCR
November 2015 [Release] :: 28 pages
http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/wp-content/uploads/2015-10-StatelessReport_ENG15-web.pdf

Overview from Report Preface
Stateless children are born into a world in which they will face a lifetime of discrimination; their status profoundly affects their ability to learn and grow, and to fulfil their ambitions and dreams for the future.

With a stateless child being born somewhere in the world at least every 10 minutes, this is a problem that is growing. In countries hosting the 20 largest stateless populations, at least 70,000 stateless children are born each year.

The effects of being born stateless are severe. In more than 30 countries, children need nationality documentation to receive medical care. In at least 20 countries, stateless children cannot be legally vaccinated.

This report aims to go beyond these statistics, providing direct testimony of children and young people and how being stateless affects them.

In July and August 2015, UNHCR spoke with more than 250 children and youth,1 and their parents and guardians, in seven countries around the world about their experiences of childhood statelessness.

This is the first geographically diverse survey of the views of stateless children and youth. Many of the children and young people had never spoken to anyone about what it was like to be stateless.

The report highlights how not being recognized as a national of any country can create insurmountable barriers to education and adequate health care and stifle job prospects. It reveals the devastating psychological toll of statelessness and its serious ramifications not only for young people, whose whole futures are before them, but also for their families, communities and countries. It powerfully demonstrates the urgency of ending and preventing childhood
statelessness.

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Press Release
UNHCR report reveals debilitating impact of statelessness on children
Press Releases, 3 November 2015
Stateless children across the world share similar feelings of discrimination, frustration and despair, says a new UNHCR report, creating problems that can endure into adulthood.
The first geographically diverse survey of the views of stateless children says the common problems they face in the countries under review profoundly affect their ability to enjoy childhood, lead a healthy life, study and fulfil their ambitions.

Many of the dozens of young people in seven countries interviewed for the I am Here, I Belong: the Urgent Need to End Childhood Statelessness report said that being stateless had taken a serious psychological toll, describing themselves as “invisible,” “alien,” “living in a shadow,” “like a street dog” and “worthless.”

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres stressed that the report, released one year after the launch of UNHCR’s #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness by 2024, highlights the need to end the suffering of stateless children in a world where a child is born stateless at least every 10 minutes.

“In the short time that children get to be children, statelessness can set in stone grave problems that will haunt them throughout their childhoods and sentence them to a life of discrimination, frustration and despair,” said Guterres. “None of our children should be stateless. All children should belong.”

The High Commissioner will, at the UN Headquarters in New York today, present the report at a high-level panel discussion on the importance of the right to nationality. More than 250 people, including children, youth and their parents or guardians were interviewed in Côte d’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Georgia, Italy, Jordan, Malaysia and Thailand last July and August for the report.

In the report, the children tell of the tough challenges they face growing up, often on the margins of society, denied the rights most citizens enjoy. Stateless children say they are often treated like foreigners in the country they have lived in all their lives.

Stateless young people are often denied the opportunity to receive school qualifications, go to university and find a decent job. They face discrimination and harassment by authorities and are more vulnerable to exploitation. Their lack of nationality often sentences them and their families and communities to remain impoverished and marginalized for generations.

Statelessness also affects the future of young people. One young woman in Asia, told UNHCR researchers that she has been unable to take up job offers as a teacher because she is stateless and can only find work in a local shop. “I want to tell the country, that there are many people like me.”

UNHCR is calling on more countries to support the campaign launched on November 4, 2014 to end statelessness. In the year since, regional initiatives and action by states have seen the global community rally behind the campaign.

In order to end statelessness, UNHCR is urging all states to take the following steps:
:: Allow children to gain the nationality of the country in which they are born if they would otherwise be stateless.
:: Reform laws that prevent mothers from passing their nationality to their children on an equal basis as fathers.
:: Eliminate laws and practices that deny children nationality because of their ethnicity, race or religion.
:: Ensure universal birth registration to prevent statelessness.