More Than 170 People Are Stateless in Malta, 48% of Them Children Under 10
The absolute majority of stateless people were men – 104 compared to 67 women, all identified as stateless. In addition, 50 of them were of Caucasian background, another 24 were of Asian background, and 40 were stateless people of Arab racial origin, AtoZSerwisPlus.mt reports.
Neil Falzon, Director of Aditus Foundation, noted that the 2021 questionnaire for these people included questions if persons had Maltese or foreign citizenship but didn’t include statelessness among options.
He also noted that the National Statistics Office isn’t responsible for verifying a person’s claim that they do not have any citizenship while pointing out that determining if someone is stateless can be a complicated process that includes research over a person’s history and relationship with different countries, as well as a place of birth, residence and marriage.
“Countries that have committed to taking this matter seriously introduced formal procedures to identify statelessness, procedures leading to an official declaration of statelessness with consequential rights. We are waiting for Malta to live up to the commitment it expressed internationally in 2019. Until then, Malta’s stateless population will remain unidentified, invisible and ignored,” he said.
In 2021 Malta was urged to keep its promises to establish a formal procedure that differs when asylum seekers are “stateless”, indicating a person isn’t considered a national of any state under the law. In 2019, Malta complied with the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, but Malta hasn’t yet taken the required steps to fulfil the Convention’s obligations.
Thus, stateless persons in Malta cannot be identified and are vulnerable to violations of their rights. Those include the rights to employment, education, freedom from discrimination, family, housing and private life.
The Director and co-founder of the European Network on Statelessness, Chris Nash, revealed that there are more than one million people in Europe that are stateless, with some of those being stateless before reaching Europe and the rest becoming stateless during their migratory journey to Europe.
He pointed out that adults that come to Malta are more likely to become stateless before arriving in the country, while children couldn’t obtain citizenship due to safeguards in Maltese nationality law.
A stateless person is considered a person that isn’t a national of any state, as the United Nations refugee agency points out.
