Statelessness

In international law, a stateless person is someone who is "not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law".^[2] Some stateless people are also refugees. However, not all refugees are stateless, and many people who are stateless have never crossed an international border.^[3] At the end of 2022, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees published an estimation of 4.4 million people worldwide as either stateless or of undetermined nationality, 90,800 (+2%) more than at the end of 2021. However, the data itself is not complete due to how UNHCR does not have data from many countries, including lacking data from at least 22 countries where mass statelessness exists.^[4][5] The data also does not include de facto stateless people who have no legal identification to prove their nationality or legal existence. According to the World Bank, at least 850 million fit that category.^[6] Given that the legal concept of nationality prevails in practice, completely undocumented people fit the definition of being de facto stateless.

The status of a person who might be stateless ultimately depends on the viewpoint of the state with respect to the individual or a group of people. In some cases, the state makes its view clear and explicit; in others, its viewpoint is harder to discern. In those cases, one may need to rely on prima facie evidence of the view of the state, which in turn may give rise to a presumption of statelessness.^[7]