Statelessness Briefing Note: “Malta’s 2019 international commitment to protect stateless people needs to be followed through.”

We are pleased to publish today a Statelessness Briefing Note. The Note is aimed at urging Malta to follow through its international commitment to protect stateless people.

In 2019 Malta acceded to the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. This was a welcome development, confirming Malta’s commitment to resolving the situation of stateless persons in Malta. Yet, to date, Malta has not taken the legislative or administrative steps necessary to fulfil its new Convention obligations.

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The 2020 Statelessness Index and Malta’s developments in this regard

Who may be considered ‘stateless’?

Stateless individuals are people who have no nationality and thus, are often denied the right to access the most basic of rights since their lack of evidence of a legal status disallows them from benefitting from their fundamental rights such as the right to education, medical care as well as employment. Various human rights treaties establish the right to nationality and for this to be enjoyed in a non-discriminatory and non-arbitrary manner. However, as evinced by the recent Statelessness Index published by the European Network on Statelessness (ENS), progress in this area is quite slow-moving in both Malta as well as the remainder of Europe. 

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Project Alert | How do we identify stateless persons in asylum scenarios?

We have just started work on a new project: Identification Tool for Statelessness in Asylum. Our efforts will seek to create a working tool allowing us – and our partners – to identify stateless persons in Malta’s asylum scenario.

Although there is no comprehensive and updated research on number of stateless persons in Malta, it is clear that a high percentage is present with asylum-seeking of refugee communities. These would be people who have either been stripped of their nationality due to, for example, ethnic conflicts or partition of states. Otherwise, they could be people who are not recognised by the state they deem to be their own because they might have lived their entire lives outside that country, in a refugee camp in a neighbouring state.

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An Update on Malta and Statelessness

A big step for Malta in 2019!

Once again, aditus foundation worked closely with the European Network on Statelessness (ENS) to research and compile comparative information on statelessness in Malta in the 2019 Statelessness Index.

One great outcome of our advocacy work is the accession by Malta to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons on 11 December. The 1954 Convention, which now has 94 parties, establishes a framework for the international protection of stateless people and is the most comprehensive codification of their rights. To be stateless is not to be recognised as a citizen by any state under the operation of its law. As a consequence, a stateless person cannot enjoy her fundamental civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights.

As we highlighted before, this is a welcome development in Malta’s approach to protecting people affected by statelessness and comes following the Government’s pledge at the UNHCR High Level Segment on Statelessness in October, as well as our joint advocacy efforts with UNHCR Malta.

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Learning about stateless children

#KeepingUpWithTheInterns

Hi everyone! I hope you are all safe and everything is going well! I am sure we will overcome these difficult days together very soon!

Today’s topic is new for me also, as I luckily got the chance to get acquainted with it through a webinar. The webinar took place on 3 April via Zoom, it was hard to focus due to distractions made by some hackers! However, luckily it was shortly after uploaded on Youtube in a much clearer version…and it is still available!

This blog post is inspired by this webinar. It was about statelessness and done by the European Network for Statelessness. During the webinar, I got an idea of the amount of suffering stateless children experience and how urgently this needs to stop.

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