MDC Lecture "Europe's Statelessness: Forgotten Past and Unsettling Future" by Aleksejs Ivashuk

This lecture takes place on Zoom. Registration is not a prerequisite for attending.

Statelessness continues to be a serious yet overlooked human rights issue worldwide, including in Europe, leaving countless millions of lives in limbo without access to basic services and legal rights. True data on statelessness is obstructed, with roughly half of all states not collecting it, including those that are known to have caused mass statelessness.¹ The issue intersects with the most prominent challenges of today, being simultaneously a problem in minority rights, child protection, justice, democracy, forced displacement, torture, inhumane treatment, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. The marginalised populations are disproportionately affected, and almost half of the world’s stateless people are estimated to be children.²

Statelessness means instability. In the long-term, it undermines the rule of law, fragments society, violates civil liberties, obstructs justice, and discredits the nation-state model of governance.³ It entails disentrancement from the right to have rights, with people being denied basic rights and forsaken in a vicious cycle of vulnerability and unequal treatment. The stateless face many challenges, such as in accessing education, healthcare, political rights, freedom of movement, and the right to own property. Many are denied basic documents (birth, marriage, death certificates, travel documents, etc.), and are often vulnerable to arbitrary arrest and detention.

Given the ubiquity of statelessness and its gravity, why is the topic poorly known? Even in Europe, a continent where state actors have repeatedly caused and maintained mass statelessness over the last century, the topic is buried away from the public. This guest lecture sheds light on the poor visibility of the subject, examining its root causes, lived experiences, and many other challenges. It concludes on potential solutions, centring the efforts of civil society and stateless-led organisations. The missing component in addressing statelessness has been the inclusion of those who have direct and lived experience of the issue.

Aleksejs Ivashuk is the founder of Apatride Network, a coalition of stateless individuals, communities, and stateless-led organisations working on addressing statelessness in the EU. He is also an associate member of the European Network on Statelessness and serves on UNHCR’s Advisory Board of organisations led by the forcibly displaced and stateless. In 2024, he co-founded the Blockchain for Human Rights consortium, bringing together stateless-led and exile-led coalitions to advocate for responsible use of blockchain technology in the digitisation of identification.

¹ Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (2025) ‘Data and Statistics’ StatelessHub https://www.statelesshub.org/theme/data-and-statistics

² UNHCR (2022) ‘Protecting Forcibly Displaced and Stateless Children: What do we know?’ https://www.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/2023-05/child-protection-data-analysis-2015-2021.pdf

³ Mira L. Siegelberg (2020) ‘Statelessness: A Modern History’ Harvard University Press

Aleksejs Ivashuk was previously employed by Thomson Reuters, IPSA International, the Green Party of Canada, and the U.S. Senate, and was actively involved with the Canadian Red Cross in its First Response and Disaster Management programs. He holds a Political Science MA from Simon Fraser University, Canada. He has published on statelessness with the University of Oxford’s Forced Migration Review, The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art, the Swiss Refugee Council, and the Statelessness & Citizenship Review. 

Apatride Network
On its website and therein accessible social media, Apatride Network has a number of resources to help learn about statelessness. The content is tailored to a diverse audience, from beginners to established experts, and includes stories, media interviews, and downloadable international conventions on statelessness.