LONDON: Karina Ambartsoumian-Clough vividly recalls her terror as a teenager when US immigration officers arrived at her home, ankle-tagged her parents and ordered the family to “self-deport”.

The trouble was they had nowhere to go — no country recognised them as nationals. Two decades on and Ambartsoumian-Clough remains stateless.

Worldwide, millions of stateless people are trapped in a legal limbo. They are often deprived of the most basic rights, exposing them to exploitation, destitution and detention.

On Monday, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) launches a new drive to tackle the crisis, following up its decade-long #Ibelong campaign that had aimed to eradicate statelessness by 2024. “It’s dehumanising, it’s isolating and it impacts everything,” Ambartsoumian-Clough, 36, said.

Millions live in limbo with no nationality

“I couldn’t get a job. I couldn’t go to college, I couldn’t travel. I couldn’t even access basic healthcare. And there’s always a fear of detention, of disappearing in a system where you just can’t get out.” People end up stateless for a host of reasons including migration, flawed citizenship laws and ethnic discrimination. Others fall through the cracks when countries break up.

Ambartsoumian-Clough was born in the former Soviet Union, but her family left just after its chaotic collapse in 1991. She is not recognised as a citizen by Ukraine, where her mother’s family have deep roots, nor by the United States where she has spent most of her life.

No big drop in numbers

Ten years ago, UN chief Antonio Guterres — then head of the UNHCR — launched an ambitious drive to end statelessness within a decade, winning the support of Nobel Laureates and celebrities, including actress Cate Blanchett. However, the scale of the problem remains little changed.

While more than 565,900 people have acquired citizenship since 2014, this is a small fraction of the global stateless population — and more children are born stateless every year. But experts are quick to reject any suggestion the #Ibelong campaign has failed.

“It has made a huge difference,” said Monika Sandvik, head of the UNHCR’s statelessness section, as she reeled off a list of countries taking action. In 2019, Kyrgyzstan became the first country to end statelessness on its territory and Turkmenistan is expected to announce similar news this week.

Kenya has granted citizenship to long-excluded ethnic groups, the Philippines has launched a national plan to address statelessness, and Colombia has awarded nationality to thousands of children born to Venezuelan migrants.

Data gaps

When #IBelong launched, the UNHCR estimated there were 10 million stateless people, but it now says there is not enough data to support a reliable estimate.

Data from 95 countries shows 4.4 million people lack a nationality, but many countries thought to have big stateless populations do not provide figures, meaning the real number is significantly higher.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2024