12 June 2015

Between the 2 and 3 June 2015, the European Network on Statelessness (ENS) held a conference addressing the theme “None of Europe’s Children should be Stateless”. It brought together scholars, practitioners, and policy makers from over 30 countries to discuss how to end statelessness among European children.

The conference presented eight country studies, undertaken by ENS members, that demonstrated the resulting diversity of circumstances for those children who are left without a nationality, such as: intergenerational statelessness left untreated; a conflict of nationality laws; the consequence of child abandonment and of systemic discrimination that has prevented people from accessing identity and nationality documentation.

An action statement was adopted at the end of the conference to guide joint efforts to end childhood statelessness, which included: calls to address research gaps; developing effective strategies to push the issue into the public and political domain; mobilising national- level actors to improve laws and policies to prevent statelessness; engaging actors at the regional and international level to promote solutions to childhood statelessness.

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This article originally appeared in the ECRE Weekly Bulletin of 12 June 2015. You can subscribe to the Weekly Bulletin here.