De facto statelessness and the meaning of ‘effective nationality’
Researcher(s): Alice Edwards
Dates: June 2010–November 2011
Donors: British Academy
With an estimated 12 million persons around the world living without nationality, statelessness has increasingly become an issue on the international human rights agenda and this has been accompanied by an emerging body of academic work.
There is a growing consensus that international law should be as much engaged with legal nationality as with whether a person’s nationality is ‘effective’. Yet there has been no study about whether the statelessness regime is the appropriate mechanism to respond to the myriad issues relating to ineffective nationality, nor is there a clear understanding of what these terms mean.
Aims
The aim of this project is to articulate a legal position on these questions, as well as to feed into policy and strategic discourse and to offer some potentially alternative viewpoints to this area of growing international importance.
This project critically examines the meaning of de facto statelessness and ‘effective nationality’ as they have emerged under international law and in academic literature and policy discourse.
Selected publications
Edwards, A. (2009) 'Displacement, Statelessness and Questions of Gender Equality under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women', UNHCR, Legal and Protection Policy Research Series, POLAS/2009/02, Geneva. View the paper at UNHCR Refworld.
