Statelessness Index

Whilst research has examined thematic issues connected with statelessness in individual European countries, there is a lack of tools that allow for comparative analysis across the region. Descriptive accounts of law and policy are useful to help understand how regimes apply to stateless persons and the prevention of statelessness; and in recent years, a small number of databases comparing countries’ efforts to address statelessness have been developed (e.g. EUDO). However, the scope and depth of these is limited and, as such, there is no comprehensive, reliable, and up-to-date index to facilitate comparison between how different European countries protect against and respond to statelessness.

The project intends to address this gap by developing a Statelessness Index that will primarily serve as an advocacy tool for members of the European Network on Statelessness (ENS), wider civil society, government, researchers, and media, to quickly understand which areas of law and policy can be improved by states and which states’ regimes can be looked to as examples of good practice in addressing statelessness.

The initial Development Phase of the Statelessness Index was completed by the (ENS) in late 2016 and included a review of existing literature and databases, consultation with ENS members, Advisory Committee and an expert Reference Group, drafting a Policy Brief, development of indicators, questionnaire and scoring system for the Index, and a small Development Pilot (Pilot 1) with three ENS member organisations in the UK, Serbia and Ireland.

This project is the next stage, where data is gathered by ENS members and experts working in European countries. An interactive website was built to host the Index and launched in the final quarter of 2017. In 2018 and 2019 the index was updated with new data and further developed with new indicators.