The number of registered stateless persons in Germany has doubled in nine years

According to the reports received from Frankfurt, it was stated by the Federal German Institute for Statistics that in the period from 2005 to 2013, the number of such people in Germany, the most populous country of the European Union, averaged between 13 thousand and 14 thousand per year. , who were recognized as stateless as they were admittedly not citizens of any country.

But in 2014, with the arrival of a large number of refugees, migrants and asylum-seekers in the country, this number continued to be significantly higher. Then it was also seen that at the end of 2022, the number of such stateless people in Germany had almost doubled to 29 thousand 455. At the end of last year, almost half of such stateless people in the country (48 percent) ) were those who were born in Syria but are now legally stateless.

According to the German statistics office, at the end of 2022, about a quarter of all stateless people registered in the country were under the age of 18 and were minors.

According to the definition set by the United Nations, a person is considered stateless when no country recognizes him as a citizen. There are many possible reasons why a person may be stateless as a refugee or immigrant.

These reasons include that the individual does not have any government-issued documentation such as an identity card or birth certificate. But it has also been observed in practice that discrimination against different human beings on the basis of their gender can also lead to their statelessness.

According to the German Statistics Office, “It has also been observed that sometimes women are not able to pass their citizenship to their children. In addition, the father either does not acknowledge the paternity of the child concerned or is unknown, with the result that any child becomes legally stateless automatically.”

As of the end of last year, 4,860 people were registered as stateless in Germany, who were born in Germany but whose parents failed to transfer their citizenship to them. Earlier in 2014, the number of such people was 3,550.

Not all children born in Germany automatically acquire German citizenship by law. This is mandatory if one of the parents is a German citizen. This is also possible if at least one of the parents of such children has been legally resident in the country for eight years, or has the right of residence for an unlimited period in Germany, or is a foreign national. Have some kind of special residence status.

But these legal possibilities do not apply to stateless persons. They can continue their stay in Germany in this status, but they remain stateless at the legal document level.