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. Some stateless people are also refugees. However not all refugees are stateless and many people who are stateless have never crossed an international border. On 12 November 2018 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees warned there are about 12 million stateless people in the world. How does nationality work? People usually acquire a nationality automatically at birth either through their parents or the country in which they were born. Sometimes however a person must apply to become a national of a country. What is statelessness? The international legal definition of a stateless person is “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”. In simple terms this means that a stateless person does not have a nationality of any country. Some people are born stateless but others become stateless.