According to Article 1 of the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons signed on 28 September 1954, the term stateless person means “any person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”. In 2024, this founding text will celebrate its 70th anniversary.

In its Global Trends report, UNHCR reports 4.4 million stateless people by the end of 2023. However, UNHCR says the true global stateless population is likely to be "considerably larger" than reported as not all countries report their statelessness data, including many countries with large known stateless populations. 

The UNHCR report states that approximately one-third of the world’s stateless people are displaced. The Rohingya in Myanmar constitute the largest stateless and displaced population: 155.500 Rohingya have been displaced from their homes within Myanmar, and 971.900 have settled in neighbouring Bangladesh. The largest non-displaced stateless populations are in Côte d’Ivoire (931.000) and Thailand (586.500).

The UNHCR report stresses that since the beginning of the #IBelong campaign (2014-2024) aimed at ending statelessness by 2024, nearly 565.900 stateless people have been able to access citizenship thanks to the recognition by some States of stateless persons or persons of undetermined nationality as nationals. Grants of nationality have been carried out, for example, by Kenya, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

If you want to know more about the new residence status as a stateless person in Belgium, please view this page.