Statelessness has a terrible impact on the lives of individuals. Possession of nationality is essential for full participation in society and a prerequisite for the enjoyment of the full range of human rights. 

Statelessness occurs for a variety of reasons including conflict of laws, the transfer of territory, marriage laws, administrative practices, discrimination, and lack of birth registration, denationalization or renunciation. Today statelessness is still a massive problem, affecting an estimated twelve million people around the world, left with no nationality, in a legal limbo. 

 In Central Europe, stateless cases are relatively few by global comparison but some countries do have significant numbers.  While updated government statistics are not available, in Slovakia and Poland there are an estimated 1,000 stateless people in each country.  In Slovenia, where thousands of people were 'erased' from Slovenia's population register in 1992 after the country became independent, an estimated 4,000 people still have uncertain citizenship status.

UNHCR has a mandate to work with governments to prevent statelessness from occurring, to resolve those cases that do occur and to protect the rights of stateless people in all countries of the world.

In Central Europe, UNHCR actively promotes accession to the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons as well as the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Three out of the seven countries covered by the Regional Representation for Central Europe, Bulgaria, Poland and Slovenia are not yet parties to one or both of the agreements. 

Other countries have already acceded to both Conventions, however, there is no mechanism to identify stateless people and systematically protect them. In Hungary, where such a specific statelessness determination and protection mechanism exists since 2007, serving as a good practice at international level, still some gaps remain in ensuring full access to the determination procedure.

Therefore UNHCR is actively lobbying for the earliest establishment and development of proper national legislative frameworks and specific mechanisms to solve the statelessness problem and allow stateless people to fulfil their basic human rights and enjoy citizen rights.