+ Short Films + Social Justice + Spotlight on Statelessness + Stories powered by Thompson Reuters Foundation + Violation of International Law -- * Blog * > * 30 years of statelessness in the former Soviet Union 30 years of statelessness in the former Soviet Union 13 September 2019 By Sofia Svensson -- Republics adopted their own nationality laws yet the collapse of the USSR is one of the events in recent history that has resulted in mass statelessness. In Ukraine around 35,000 people were left stateless (or at risk of statelessness) and almost double this number were left stateless or at risk of statelessness in Russia. Because former Soviet states took different approaches to the gain or -- people who never exchanged their Soviet passports for the passports of a newly formed state for one reason or another became vulnerable and, ultimately, stateless. Who are stateless in the former Soviet Union? The most vulnerable people in terms of statelessness in former Soviet countries are members of ethnic minorities. For example, the majority of Lezgians living in dense communities in areas of Azerbaijan -- documents, they took their case to the European Court of Human Rights in 2010 (Lakatosh and Others v. Russia). Assisted by ADC Memorial they won the case. Yet almost 10 years later they remain stateless and without documents. How many are stateless? According to published data, the number of stateless people in Russia is falling, but is still high: the 2010 Russian census reports that there were over 178,000 stateless persons in the country, while data from UNHCR shows that there were 113,474 stateless persons in 2014,14 82,148 in 2017, and 75,679 as of early 2019. There is no doubt that the actual number of stateless persons in Russia is much higher. According to assessments made by the UNHCR on the basis of official data, in 2017 35,294 people who were stateless or at risk of statelessness were living in Ukraine,10 while a 2017 report from the OSCE states that only 78 per cent of residents of Ukraine have identity documents. It is worth noting that from 2014, the number of persons at risk of statelessness has increased significantly due to the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine. In the eastern parts of Ukraine which has been seized by pro-Russian armed groups, 57% of all -- What is the solution? The majority of stateless persons have grounds for acquiring, say, Russian or Ukrainian citizenship on the basis of their territorial origin, but the formalisation or inaccessibility of the procedure for doing this and defects in the corresponding laws of both countries trap stateless persons in a legal impasse on their path to citizenship. For them, the solution can be straightforward, although they still require legal assistance to approach the court in order to obtain a passport. For others who do not appear to have a right to acquire citizenship, the only option would be to undergo statelessness determination, but the procedure does not exist in many post-Soviet countries, including Russia and Ukraine. Many still lack an effective procedure to legalise stateless persons who, without valid identity documents, are not only deprived of access to realise their rights, but are also prosecuted for violating the migration laws of the countries where they are located. -- and the most important decision issued by Russia’s Constitutional Court (case of Noé Mskhiladze, 2017), which could fundamentally improve the situation of stateless persons in Russia. Even though the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs developed a draft law two years ago envisaging that stateless persons would be issued identity documents giving them the right to reside in Russia, the right to work without work licenses and permits, and the possibility for former Soviet -- USSR, many former Soviet countries have still not been able to tackle the situation of documentation or resolve the issues around nationality that arose in its aftermath. This has meant that statelessness is now being passed on to a new generation. How many more decades will it take to eradicate statelessness in the region? Share this