Addressing statelessness: evaluating the performance of UN monitoring mechanisms

Vera Karanika, Stefania Tantimonaco and Laura van Waas

Chapter 30 in Research Handbook on Accountability for Human Rights Violations, 2025, pp 540-555 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: International human rights law protects every person's right to a nationality. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), among other legal instruments, recognises the right to a nationality as a fundamental human right that should be enjoyed by all human beings. Yet, statelessness pervades the life of more than 15 million people across the globe. The UDHR also affirms that ‘all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’, meaning that human rights derive their authority from human dignity, not nationality. Yet stateless people are among the most vulnerable and excluded. All too often, nationality continues to function as a gateway to other rights and so stateless people struggle to enjoy quality education and healthcare; safe, secure and dignified work; inheritance and ownership of property; and basic banking, communication and other services. By failing to uphold their international obligation to ensure every person's right to a nationality or protect the human rights of stateless people, States breach international human rights law and need to be held accountable. As part of their mandate, UN human rights mechanisms are charged with monitoring States’ human rights records. These mechanisms can ultimately influence States’ laws, jurisprudence, policies and practices on nationality and statelessness around the world. This chapter explores how statelessness is framed as a human rights issue within the UN human rights ecosystem, how UN human rights mechanisms address the violations suffered by stateless people; and offers an evaluation of the performance of such mechanisms in promoting the enjoyment of the right to nationality and the rights of stateless people.

Keywords: Statelessness; Nationality; Citizenship; UPR; Treaty bodies; Special procedures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035306923
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