Half a million stateless people get citizenship in past decade

The UN said yesterday that in the decade since it launched a campaign to end the limbo of statelessness, more than half a million people without a nationality had acquired citizenship.

In a report, the UN's refugee agency detailed the progress made since it launched its #IBelong campaign in 2014. Its aim was to mobilise international action to resolve the problem of statelessness.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) described statelessness as “a major human rights violation”.

It leaves people politically and economically marginalised, unable to access critical services and particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse,” the agency argued. Last year, the UNHCR reported that there were 4.4 million stateless people recorded, but that millions more were affected since the data only covers around half of the world's countries.