Rachel Hamada is Scottish Refugee Council Media and Communications Officer
It’s like Kafka or Orwell. Imagine a nightmare in which you are not legally the citizen of any country. You’re real, you are flesh and blood, you were born somewhere, in a place with precise coordinates that could be typed into a GPS. But for some reason you are now a citizen of nowhere. Maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe you’re part of an ethnic grouping that isn’t recognised by a national government, or is being persecuted by one. Maybe you’ve annoyed your government by speaking out against them.
You probably can’t get married or open a bank account. Nobody is responsible for your welfare and no overseas embassy will offer you help. There is no legal bond between you and any state. You’re in limbo, you’re a ghost.
What fate lies in store for you? Not a pretty one, especially if you’re a woman or a child. Without the safety net of state protection and entitlements, often without even the right to work legally, there’s a high chance you’ll end up on the streets, desperate and exploited. For most people there is no way available to break this cycle, unless the government of the country you are living in allows you a route to escape your limbo status.
Living in limbo
Surely this is such an extreme situation that it must be rare? Not so rare: there are an estimated 600,000 stateless people living in Europe. That’s more than the entire population of Edinburgh, scattered across Europe, with no legal home. Asylum Aid estimates that around 200 stateless people apply for asylum in the UK every year, often because they feel it to be the only viable route open to them – Scotland’s share is likely to be 15-20 people each year. Of the UK total, between 50 to 100 are denied asylum but are unable to return to their country of origin because they do not have citizenship. As ‘refused asylum seekers’ by category, these people then cannot work and are incredibly vulnerable. For them there is no light at the end of the tunnel, and they often end up in detainment, despite having committed no crime.
Asylum Aid’s Chris Nash, who is also director of the new European Network on Statelessness, recounts a man he spoke to in a refugee camp in Lebanon, who had been brought up there from childhood with no nationality. “I see myself as a bird with nowhere to rest on the ground, but which can’t spend his whole life in the sky.”
The UK Government in 2013 did announce a new protection route for stateless people – this does not necessarily work very well in practice yet, but the intention to recognise this group and help them is actually progressive and commendable in international terms. What is necessary is a concerted push to make this route work for the people it has been created to help, as well as good decision-making on each case. Access to legal advice across the UK and the right to appeal decisions would also make the new system much fairer.
Push to tackle statelessness
Scottish Refugee Council remains neutral on the issue of Scottish independence, but should the vote be for Scottish independence on 18 September, we would urge the Scottish Government to establish a statelessness determination procedure in line with international law and good practice, learning from the limitations of the current UK one.
Next week will see the Global Forum on Statelessness in The Hague, an international event designed to address the problem worldwide, including an exhibition of photojournalist Greg Constantine’s Nowhere People photographs documenting the plight of stateless people around the world.
The UN’s Refugee Agency is also expected later this year to launch a ten-year campaign to eradicate statelessness, both by finding solutions for people who are already stateless, but also by working to prevent new cases of statelessness.
Sign the petition to help stateless people in Europe, to be handed to European leaders on 14 October
