Everyone has the right to a nationality

Around 600.000 stateless persons live in Europe today, including many migrants stuck in perpetual limbo.

The European Network on Statelessness (ENS) has launched a pan-European petition calling on European leaders to take action to protect stateless people in Europe and enable them to rebuild their lives.

The Danish Institute for Human Rights encourages you to sign and share the ENS online petition which will be presented to European leaders. Sign the petition here.

Get to know the faces of statelessness, find coverage and much more on the ENS's facebook page.

Short animated film about statelessness:



The Danish Institute for Human Rights has for many years worked with the statelessness issue. A prerequisite for its solution is awareness of its importance. In 2011, the Institute noted that some stateless persons were not properly registered as stateless. This led to effective cooperation with the Danish Immigration Service.

In autumn 2011, a series of dialogue meetings were held and the Danish Immigration Service launched several initiatives to ensure an accurate record of stateless persons and to guide prospective stateless foreigners about the possibility of re-registration of their citizenship. In spring 2012, the Danish Immigration Service emitted 4,000 orientation letters about the possibility of re-registration to a wide range of possible stateless expatriates from Syria, Bhutan and Burma. The Danish Immigration Service also established a hotline for questions about statelessness and re-registration.

The special advisory efforts contributed to several foreigners were newly registered as stateless. In 2011, the figure was 3.074. Today we know that 4.352 stateless persons are living in Denmark. Now we need to give them the opportunity to obtain citizenship.

Read also Senior Researcher Eva Ersbøll's comment on how Danish citizenship is both the hardest to attain and the easiest to lose in the article, "The changing face of Danish citizenship".

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