This significant milestone will help protect stateless people, allowing them to access basic rights which have remained out of reach for decades, says the UNHCR.
Without citizenship, stateless people often do not have access to essential services, including health care, and now may be unable to access coronavirus testing and treatment.
More than 85 governments, civil society and international and regional organisations, have this week pledged hundreds of new commitments to end statelessness, a major cause of human rights deprivations for millions of people worldwide.
UNHCR recommends that the Finnish Presidency focuses on two urgent priorities: building cooperation and solidarity with refugees and host communities, and pushing for an effective way of sharing responsibility among EU Member States.
Statelessness robs individuals of their identity and their most fundamental human rights, acknowledged a webinar on Global Action Plan to End Statelessness on 4 November 2016. The webinar was organised by World Council of Churches to assess the work achieved since the launch of the #IBelong Campaign to end statelessness by the UNHCR in 2014.
New powers have come into force this week allowing the Home Secretary Theresa May to deprive naturalised Britons of their citizenship, even where doing so would render them stateless.
The Government is pushing ahead with plans which allow it to make Britons stateless by depriving them of citizenship, despite having described such moves as a “negative step.”
MPs are tomorrow (7 May) expected to vote on the Home Secretary’s plans for a vast expansion of the Government’s power to arbitrarily deprive Britons of their citizenship.