More should be done to ease the difficult situation that millions of stateless people experience around the world, UNHCR said in a statement released on November 4 -- the seventh anniversary of the #IBelong campaign. The UN refugee agency had launched the campaign in 2014 with the aim of ending statelessness within ten years.

"Significant progress has been made over the past few years, but governments must do more to close the legal and policy gaps that continue to leave millions of people stateless or allow children to be born into statelessness," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

UNHCR: More must be done

UNHCR said that since the launch of the campaign, "more than 400,000 stateless people in 27 countries have acquired nationality, while tens of thousands of people across Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas now have a pathway to citizenship as a result of newly enacted legislative changes."

The UN agency also said that 29 states had joined the UN's Statelessness Conventions over the past seven years -- in these two documents, countries promise to take measures aimed at improving life for stateless people and preventing statelessness.

"We are encouraged by this global momentum to tackle statelessness, which with concerted efforts by States, we can eradicate," Grandi said. "But unless progress accelerates, the millions who remain deprived of a nationality will be stuck in a human rights limbo, unable to access the most basic rights."

Millions of stateless persons

If a person is not recognized as a citizen by any country, they are considered stateless. There is little reliable recent data on statelessness, but in 2018, UNHCR estimated that the number of stateless persons worldwide was 12 million.

Stateless people are often deprived of rights and services that non-stateless people can easily access, such as health care, schooling, and social benefits. Their abilities to travel, work, and even legally marry are often severely limited.

"This leaves them politically and economically marginalized and vulnerable to discrimination, exploitation, and abuse," UNHCR said in their November 4 statement. "They may also not be able to access COVID-19 testing, treatment or vaccination, and may have little access to support or protection in the face of climate risks."

Discriminatory citizenship laws

UNHCR explained that stateless is often "the result of gaps or flaws in nationality laws, and how they are implemented."

The agency said that "discrimination -- including on the basis of ethnicity, religion and gender -- is a major driver of statelessness." The majority of stateless people belong to minority groups, according to UNHCR. Gender discrimination is a common cause of statelessness because many countries do not let women pass on their citizenship to their children -- leaving them stateless if their father is unknown, missing, deceased or stateless.