Statelessness | Asylum Aid

Our mission is to give people with no nationality a chance to have their life back.

The human costs of statelessness are harrowing. Stateless people are left at risk of destitution, homelessness, exploitation and indefinite immigration detention. 

The 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons defines a stateless person as “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”. 

In practice this means that many stateless persons are left without legal residence, consular protection, or the right to return to their country of origin. No Government takes responsibility for their protection. For those who have fallen through the cracks in this way, the consequences are serious. 

If you are stateless, you do not have the nationality of any country. It means that you have no home and no place you belong. No country will look after you, you cannot vote in any country, and no foreign embassy will extend its help to protect your rights. You often have nowhere you can legally reside. You will be forbidden from accessing many of the services citizens often take for granted - like healthcare and social welfare. You often cannot legally cross international borders because you lack identity and/or travel documents. In short, it means you cannot live your life freely or safely. 

How do we work on statelessness?

This is one of the most complex areas of international protection and we are determined to tackle it.

Asylum Aid, alongside the Liverpool Law Clinic, is at the forefront of work on statelessness in the UK. We offer free legal advice and representation for applications to remain in the UK as a stateless person under Appendix Statelessness of the Immigration Rules (previously Part 14).

To provide this service, we work in partnership with 10 city law partners, who generously provide Pro Bono legal support to take on statelessness cases to ensure people affected by statelessness are able to achieve settled status in the UK.

We seek to test new legal advice models that enable us to provide specialist advice and representation to stateless persons who are currently unable to receive legal aid.

Through this frontline legal representation, Asylum Aid is able to gather information on Home Office decision-making practices. Enabling us to drive policy and practice change through the Home Office building on the constructive channels of communication developed during our long history of work in this area. 

We work to ensure that stateless people receive the protection they need. Working concurrently alongside our legal work, we develop accessible legal and policy tools and we provide training to lawyers and non-legal specialists to increase the number of individuals who can get the support they need to take statelessness claims forward.

We are hugely grateful to the members of the City Law Group who make this work possible: Akin, Ashurst, Cooley, Dentons, Freshfields, Morrison & Foerster, Orrick, Reed Smith and Skadden.