Every person in Europe should benefit from the rights provided for by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights. However, despite living in a region that enjoys an advanced human rights framework, hundreds of thousands of stateless persons in Europe continue to have little or no access to many fundamental human rights. These “legal ghosts” are left voiceless and experience daily exclusion as a result. This brings into stark perspective the importance of human rights which guarantee our ability to be heard, to associate with others and to participate in democratic processes.
In Serbia today, thousands of individuals are deprived of exercising their basic human rights due to unregulated citizenship status. This number includes those who are not registered in birth registries and are consequently left without citizenship. Moreover, some were registered in citizens’ books that were later destroyed or went missing, while some were left without the citizenship after the dissolution of the former Yugoslav Republic or acquired the citizenship of the republic they were not living in anymore. Most of these persons are members of the Roma national minority, one of the most vulnerable and marginalized population groups in Serbia, which have being living through generations without any evidence on their identity, birth or origin due to poverty and social exclusion, inadequate regulations and long-lasting ignorance of their problem. They are not just voiceless but are also invisible to the system. Being deprived of the citizenship means being deprived of the possibility to exercise the right to health care, social protection, employment and the right to participate in the political life.
We believe that all human beings have a right to a nationality and that those who lack nationality altogether are entitled to adequate protection - including the freedom to speak and be heard, to associate with others and to partake in democratic processes.
In light of strong pledges made by many European countries to end statelessness, and to identify and protect stateless populations to ensure their enjoyment of human rights, the European Network on Statelessness marks international human rights day by drawing attention to hundreds of thousands of stateless persons in Europe, whose voices should count as much as our own, but do not.
The position of the stateless is the focus of a public statement released today by the European Network on Statelessness, a civil society alliance with NGO Praxis as its member, committed to address statelessness in Europe.
