Stateless persons are those who have no nationality, or whose nationality is ineffective. This report approaches the subject through the prism of detention - a crucial issue which offers unique insight into the broader challenge of statelessness. The stateless person who cannot legally travel, reside in a country, work, study or receive health care, and whose life is a tightrope walk along the dividing line between legality and illegality is very vulnerable to detention. How a state treats stateless detainees is a reflection of how committed it is to protect those whose rights are most at risk.

In 1949, stateless persons – marginalised from society – were described as an “anomaly”. This was because legal systems were ill-equipped to deal with them. Sixty years, two international statelessness conventions, an international organisation mandated to address their situation and many human rights treaties later, the stateless remain an anomaly and continue to be marginalised.

In this report, The Equal Rights Trust attempts to unravel the anomaly. The report finds that inequality and discrimination lie at the heart of the statelessness problem, as does the eternal tug-of-war between universal human rights and national sovereignty. It also finds that many persons who are held in long term immigration detention “awaiting removal” are in reality stateless, and therefore cannot be removed. The report argues that statelessness should primarily be seen as a human rights issue, that the UNHCR and human rights treaty bodies should work in partnership to address the challenge, that all countries should implement statelessness determination procedures and that authoritative guidelines should be developed for the detention of stateless persons.