None of Europe’s Children should be Stateless
The European Network on Statelessness (ENS) is campaigning for an end to childhood statelessness in Europe. This goal is also central to the #ibelong campaign, spearheaded by UNHCR, to end all statelessness globally by 2024. To realise children’s right to a nationality in Europe, the phenomenon and the challenges need to be better understood. Different stakeholders must also unite to identify and share good practices so that these challenges can be addressed.
Comparative research and evidence-based advocacy is a central activity of the ENS campaign “None of Europe’s Children should be Stateless” which was launched on International Children’s Day on 20th November 2014. ENS has secured funding to undertake initial research in eight European countries – Albania, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovenia. This research will study the presence/absence, content and implementation of legislative safeguards for the prevention of childhood statelessness at the national level in these countries. The research findings will be presented at a regional conference on children’s right to nationality in June 2015 and should feed into both national and regional-level advocacy aimed to improve access to nationality for stateless children.