DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Identity without citizenship Towards a global uniform registration system for the stateless Alansari, Omar Award date: 2020 Awarding institution: Queen's University Belfast Link to publication Terms of use All those accessing thesis content in Queen’s University Belfast Research Portal are subject to the following terms and conditions of use • Copyright is subject to the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, or as modified by any successor legislation • Copyright and moral rights for thesis content are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners • A copy of a thesis may be downloaded for personal non-commercial research/study without the need for permission or charge • Distribution or reproduction of thesis content in any format is not permitted without the permission of the copyright holder • When citing this work, full bibliographic details should be supplied, including the author, title, awarding institution and date of thesis Take down policy A thesis can be removed from the Research Portal if there has been a breach of copyright, or a similarly robust reason. 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Oct. 2021 Identity without Citizenship: Towards a Global Uniform Registration System for the Stateless Submitted to Queen’s University Belfast, School of Law in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Omar Ismail Alansari, LL.M August 2019 Abstract For political and other reasons, statelessness or the lack of any citizenship has affected millions of people around the world, depriving many of them of many rights that other people take for granted, such as the right to legal residence, to travel and to work. In recent years, the international community has given much attention to this phenomenon. An attempt to end it by 2024 in the form of the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness was launched in 2014 by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has a limited mandate to address statelessness. However, this international focus on ending statelessness, although helpful in some contexts, has been at the expense of work to identify, protect and document stateless people pending their naturalisation. This thesis argues that ending statelessness is a too ambitious and improbable goal; given this fact, leaving the stateless without a legal identity embodied in proper documentation is perilous, as documentation is needed today to access most rights and services. For this reason and other reasons discussed in this thesis, while efforts to end statelessness should continue, more international effort should be focused on the fundamental issues the stateless often face, namely the lack of identification and proper legal identity. In order to better identify and protect the stateless, this thesis proposes a global, uniform registration system for the stateless, whereby stateless people are registered and documented by national governments but in a globally uniform manner and with the necessary oversight by and assistance from UNHCR. This thesis provides justifications for this pragmatic system based on an examination of relevant theories, historical experiences and the effectiveness of current international and national approaches to tackling statelessness. ii Table of Contents Abstract……………………….………………………………………….…..….ii Table of Contents……………..……………………………………………………..…….iii Tables…………..……………………………………………………..………………..….. viii Abbreviations……………..…………………………………………..………………..…...ix Glossary…………………………………………………..……………...……………….….xi Cases………………..…………………………………………………….……………….....xv Legislations……………………………………………………………….……………….xv Other Primary Sources…………...……………………………….…….……...xv Dedication……..……………………….………………………………………...………...xxi Acknowledgments……………...…………………………………………...……..…......xxii 1. Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………..1 1.1. General Background on Statelessness……………………………………………….3 1.1.1. Defining statelessness and citizenship…………………………………………………..3 1.1.2. The history and causes of statelessness…………………………………………………6 1.1.3. Statelessness under international law…………………………………………………..10 1.1.3.1. 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Statelessness………………………………13 1.1.3.2. 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness…………………………………...16 1.1.3.3. Ending statelessness vs protection and registration……………………………………18 1.2. Research Proposal…………………………………………………………………...19 1.2.1. A global, uniform registration system for the stateless………………...……………….20 1.2.2. Summary of the main justifications for a global, uniform registration system………......23 1.2.2.1. The need for enhanced registration of the stateless………………..……………...……23 1.2.2.2. Uniformity and international supervision……………………………………….............27 1.2.2.3. Pragmatism and global uniform registration of the stateless……….…………................29 1.2.2.4. Registration of the stateless: the lesser of two evils…………………………………….30 1.3. Methodology and Structure…………………………………………………………31 1.3.1. Approach………………………………………………………………………….…..31 1.3.2. Limitations………………………………………………………………………….....31 1.3.2.1. Statelessness and the limits of codified international standards……………...…………31 1.3.2.2. Lack of literature on global registration of the stateless…………………………….….32 1.3.3. Structure………………………………………………………………………………33 iii 2. Chapter 2: Situating the Proposal: A Review of the Literature and Theoretical Approaches …………………………….……………………........................34 2.1. Literature Review: International Registration of the Stateless……………………34 2.1.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………….................34 2.1.2. The ‘Big Idea’: A global network to solve statelessness………………………………..35 2.1.3. The unfeasibility and danger of global registration of the stateless……………...…..….42 2.1.4. European harmonised national SDPs………………………………………………….47 2.1.5. Nansen passports for climate stateless people…………………………………………49 2.1.6. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….51 2.2. Theoretical Approaches to Statelessness…………………………………….……..51 2.2.1. Protecting rights: nationality or recognition?...........................................................................51 2.2.1.1. Hannah Arendt and the right to have rights…………………………………………...52 2.2.1.2. The obsoleteness of Arendt’s thesis on statelessness and rightlessness……......................54 2.2.1.3. Statelessness and recognition approaches……………………………………………...63 2.2.1.4. Conclusion: Towards a balanced approach on nationality and rights…………………..68 2.2.2. Theoretical understanding of states’ responses to statelessness: Towards a pragmatic approach to statelessness……………………………………………………………………....70 2.2.2.1. Statelessness and rational choice theory of compliance………………………………...71 2.2.2.2. A theoretical approach to solving statelessness: Pragmatism.…………………………76 2.3. Summary…………………………………………………………………………..…84 3. Chapter 3: The History of International Registration of the Stateless…………………………………………………………………………...……...…86 3.1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………….…....86 3.2. Refugeehood versus Statelessness and Registration………………………………86 3.3. Registration of Stateless Refugees under the League of Nations………….….......88 3.3.1. Refugee organisations and registration of the stateless...……………………………….90 3.3.1.1. Fridtjof Nansen: The first League of Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees….…..91 3.3.1.2. Nansen International Office for Refugees…………………………………....................94 3.3.1.3. High Commission for Refugees Coming from Germany……………………………....95 3.3.1.4. Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees…………………………………………...96 3.3.2. Documentation as a pragmatic response to the interwar refugee crisis………….............97 3.4. Registration of the Stateless under the United Nations………………………….100 3.4.1. International Refugee Organisation (IRO)..……………………………………...........100 3.4.2. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA)………104 iv 3.4.3. United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR)……………………........106 3.4.3.1. Registration of refugees……………………………………………………..................107 3.4.3.2. Registration of the stateless…………………………………………………………..108 3.5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………......111 4. Chapter 4: The Need to Prioritise and Improve Identification of the Stateless Through Registration……………………...........................................................113 4.1. Introduction……..………………………………………………………………….113 4.2. UNHCR and Ending Statelessness……………………………………………….113 4.2.1. UNHCR’s mandate and roles on statelessness………………………………………..114 4.2.1.1. Identification…………………………………………………………………….........115 4.2.1.2. Prevention and reduction…………………………………………………….………121 4.2.1.3. Protection……………………………………………………………………………122 4.2.2. Global Action Plan to End Statelessness by 2024……………………………..............124 4.2.2.1. Overview………………………………………………………………….…….…....124 4.2.2.2. 2017 Goals………………………………………………………………………........125 4.2.2.3. Comments……………………………………………………………….……….......128