What is the main problem the project is seeking to address? Over half a million people in Europe are denied their right to a nationality and other human rights. The causes of statelessness in Europe include State succession, gaps, conflicts or discrimination in nationality laws and State practices, as well as deliberate policies to deny or strip people of nationality. Statelessness affects both migrants and refugees, and people who have lived in the same place for generations. Thousands of children are born stateless in Europe each year because States do not have safeguards in their laws to ensure that every child acquires a nationality. There is a lack of awareness and political will to address this issue, often rooted in discrimination. As a result, the risk of statelessness is perpetuated, and people who are stateless face significant barriers to living their lives in full. There is an urgent need to build on recent progress in encouraging more European states to introduce dedicated statelessness determination procedures (SDPs) as well as to reform nationality laws so that they contain full safeguards to prevent children being born stateless, as required by international law. The Global Alliance to End Statelessness (GAtES) offers exciting potential to leverage and accelerate this progress but currently two interlinked challenges frustrate the realisation of this, namely: 1) A lack of funding constrains civil society’s ability to engage with GAtES, including to advocate towards and alongside governments/institutions in the region; and 2) There is still insufficient centering of communities and lived experience in changemaking efforts.

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What is the main change the project seeks to achieve? This project will achieve the desired change by: 1) Engaging and equipping civil society and community organisations to successfully advocate towards and alongside governments for necessary law and policy reform; and 2) Promoting and disseminating Advocacy Guidelines that empower people with lived experience of statelessness to engage in meaningful and impactful advocacy. The first change will be accomplished by ENS and its members being better resourced to fully engage with GAtES, including to undertake additional and targeted advocacy towards European states to implement pledged law and policy reform and to encourage increased multistakeholder engagement in various national and regional forums. In particular, we will have increased capacity to leverage the Solution Seeker Programme (SSP), to engage with Thematic Working Groups (TWGs) and to progress implementation of ENS’s existing GRF pledges. Specifically ENS will engage with the Protection TWG (e.g. by contributing good practices from its Statelessness Index and undertaking advocacy in support of letter writing campaigns for the adoption of SDPs) and the Childhood Statelessness TWG (e.g. by contributing to a planned webinar in November and supporting the Council of Europe’s CDCJ stateless children initiative). We will progress implementation of our four pledges made at the 2023 GRF: namely, i) to join/support the Global Alliance (e.g. by diligently serving on its Advisory Committee); ii) to develop our Statelessness Case Law Database (e.g. by adding new cases); and iii) to roll out the our identification toolkit (e.g. by seeking new project funding to replace lost PRM funding). The second change will be accomplished by convening a Regional Network Lab (RNL) to strengthen community participation, including to promote and disseminate our new Advocacy Guidelines (jointly pledged by ENS at the 2023 GRF) which support the participation and centering of stateless-led organisations in changemaking efforts. These Guidelines were co-developed with stateless-led organisations and community members within our Network and offer a transformative opportunity to support stateless people to be better able to claim power as leaders of change.

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Who are the key partners? ENS is a civil society alliance of over 180 NGOs, community organisations, and individual experts in 41 countries. We connect stateless people, their communities, and experts from across Europe with a shared dedication to breaking the cycle of statelessness and realising everyone’s right to a nationality. We aim to achieve this by enabling collective action in three areas: law and policy development, awareness-raising, and capacity-building. We will consult our membership to identify members who wish to partner on our project activities aimed at increasing engagement with GAtES. To support this, we will set up an ad hoc member working group to identify and develop GAtES engagement opportunities (e.g. with the SSP, TWGs or RNLs etc). This will include existing GAtES members (e.g. ASKV, Forum Refugies, Mission Armenia, 10th of April, R2P, Salam DHR etc) but we will also use our convening power to seek to engage other ENS members with planned activities. A particular focus will be to partner with stateless-led organisations, including Statefree and Apatride Network (both GAtES members and co-designers of our Advocacy Guidelines), in the development and delivery of the planned Regional Network Lab on strengthening community participation scheduled to take place in December 2025. We will also seek to engage other stakeholders in all our advocacy, and specifically with the planned RNL, including other relevant community and civil society organisations outside our Network, as well as governments, institutions and others at whom the Guidelines are targeted.

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Who is the target population for this project? PrimaryImpacted stateless people and communities themselves – either as ultimate beneficiaries (e.g. improved protection resulting from law and policy reform) and/or through being supported to meaningfully engage with and lead advocacy efforts. The other primary target population would be other CSOs within the ENS network who would be supported to engage with GAtES and related changemaking work

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OtherStates, institutions and other stakeholders who would directly or indirectly benefit form project outputs and dissemination e.g. access to ENS’s Advocacy Guidelines, Statelessness Index, Statelessness Case Law Database and other tools and know-how.

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Funding and costs What is the total cost of this project?30,000 USD

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How much funding is needed?30,000 USD

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