The 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons contains a widely accepted definition of statelessness. Therein a stateless person is defined as someone âwho is not considered as a national by any State under operation of its law.â The phrase âunder operation of its lawâ is of key importance. It means that the concept of nationality is treated as a legal concept rather than a natural one. In other words, a person can factually, ancestrally, and circumstantially belong on a territory of a state, being rooted there, but unless the authorities in that state legally recognise that bond the person will effectively be stateless (unless they have that recognition from another state).
Due to imperfections of the state system itself in guaranteeing stability, rational governance, and non-discrimination, anyone anywhere can become stateless at any point of time. With political winds being always unpredictable, no state can truly guarantee inviolability of national belonging to its members. Denationalisation for political dissent, and, more commonly, simply for being part of ethnic or religious minority, are the most common causes of mass statelessness. Twenty-four countries in the world also do not allow women to pass on their nationality, with over fifty countries restricting that right, generating another common way by which children are born into statelessness.
It is important to note that the bonds of nationality and citizenship are not an empty legal formality: they need to involve the fulfillment of equal rights and obligations. There are various sub-citizenships wherein a state recognises a bond between itself and its members but does not allow some members to access equal rights that are essential to defining citizenship/nationality. A person without such rights, being a ânationalâ in name only, is very likely de facto stateless.
On the one hand, it may sound romantic to some for a person to be free from belonging to a state. In reality, rights derive from how a person legally belongs to their respective state. Without that belonging, the person is deprived of rights, even the most basic ones. This means serious harm to the person and, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, amounts to âa form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the developmentâ. Given the arbitrary nature of how mass statelessness is caused, tied to irrationality of racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination, the phenomenon undermines nation-state model of governance and the fundamental values on which it is supposed to be built.