Court name: European Court of Human Rights
State: Spain
Date of decision:

The Court found a violation of Article 8, in a groundbreaking case regarding children’s right to a birth certificate. The applicant was born in Mexico and repatriated to Spain after an earthquake. Despite his mother’s attempts, his birth was not registered upon arrival in Spain as the necessary documentation had been destroyed by the earthquake in Mexico, and he was issued with an ID card only at 21. The Court found that, upon becoming aware of the situation, Spanish authorities were under a positive obligation to assist the applicant in obtaining documentation and the failure to do so resulted in a violation of Article 8 ECHR.

Court name: Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber)
Date of decision:

The case concerns a Belarusian individual who had entered the UK in 1998, whose asylum applications were refused and who spent the subsequent eighteen years in immigration bail as his identity could not be confirmed and he could not be deported to Belarus. He complained that the state of “limbo” in which he was as a result of his immigration bail constituted an infringement of his right to private life. He also alleged that he had become stateless as result of losing his Belarusian nationality. The court found that there was a violation of Article 8 of the ECHR. On the statelessness question, it was held he could not be considered a stateless person. 

Court name: Constitutional Court of Hungary
State: Hungary
Date of decision:

The Constitutional Court held that in a case where the acting authority finds, on the basis of the opinion of expert agencies, that the applicant's stay would violate or endanger the national security of Hungary, the application for statelessness status shall be rejected on procedural grounds without further examination of whether the applicant qualifies as a stateless person.

Court name: Constitutional Court of Hungary
State: Hungary
Date of decision:

The applicant, a stateless person residing in Hungary, faced protracted difficulties in regularising his legal situation, being eventually recognised as stateless after fifteen years' residence. During thirteen of those years, the applicant had no legal status in Hungary and was entitled to neither healthcare nor employment, nor was he able to marry. Constitutional Court proceedings were initiated by a judge, in which the judge proposed to declare that the term "lawful residence" in the territory of Hungary, as provided for in 76§ (1) of Act no. II of 2007 on Admission and Right of Residence of Third-Country Nationals (Harmtv), which requires a person to be lawfully staying in the country in order to be granted statelessness status, was contrary to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, and to order a general prohibition of its application in the given case. The Constitutional Court held that the term “lawful residence” was contrary to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, thus deleted it from the cited law. However, it refused to prohibit its application to the underlying procedure, as the applicant concerned was able to initiate a new procedure afterwards. This case reached the European Court of Human Rights (Sudita Keita v. Hungary).

Court name: European Court of Human Rights
State: Hungary
Date of decision:

A stateless person faced protracted difficulties in regularising his legal situation, and was recognised as stateless only after residing in Hungary for 15 years. During 13 of those years, the applicant had no legal status in Hungary and was entitled to neither healthcare nor employment, nor was he able to marry. The Court held that Hungary had not complied with its positive obligation to provide an effective and accessible procedure enabling the applicant to have his status in Hungary determined with due regard to his private-life interests under Article 8 ECHR.

Court name: Supreme Court
Date of decision:

The applicant is a stateless person, who committed an administrative offence of drug abuse, and was sentenced to administrative detention and expulsion. The Court considered that in his specific circumstances, which included statelessness and long-term residence in Russia since childhood, expulsion would be a disproportionate measure at risk of violating Russia's international human rights commitments, and reduced the sentence to administrative detention only. 

Court name: Supreme Administrative Court
State: Poland
Date of decision:

The applicant was born in the US, and his birth certificate indicated a Polish national as the father, and an unknown surrogate mother as the mother. Polish authorities refused to confirm the applicant acquired Polish nationality at birth as a child of a Polish parent, because the birth certificate is against the Polish public order, in particular the prohibition of surrogacy. The courts ruled in favour of the applicant, stating that confirmation of his Polish nationality on the basis of the birth certificate does not amount to validation of surrogacy.

Court name: Federal Administrative Court
State: Germany
Date of decision:

The applicant is a stateless Palestinian, whose naturalisation application was rejected based on the means of sustenance requirement. His dependants (wife and children) live in Jordan, where he is able to sustain them with his consistent employment in low-wage jobs - as undisputed by the authorities, and there was no indication of the family intending to relocate to Germany. The lower instance courts sided with the applicant that the hypothetical case of the family relocating to Germany need not be considered in the context of means of sustenance requirement, and the fact that the applicant never relied on social securities and has always been in gainful employment in Germany should be sufficient, but the Federal Administrative Court overruled those judgments and upheld the authorities decision to reject the applicant's naturalisation request, which left him stateless. 

Court name: European Court of Human Rights (First Section)
State: Croatia
Date of decision:

A stateless person of Albanian origin, whose parents had been granted refugee status in the former SFRY, had lived in Croatia for nearly forty years, but his repeated attempts to regularise his residence were largely unsuccessful, apart from short term permits that were granted and withdrawn sporadically. The Court found that Croatia’s failure to comply with its positive obligation to provide an effective and accessible procedure or a combination of procedures enabling the applicant to have the issues of his further stay and status in Croatia determined amounted to a violation of the right to private and family life under Article 8 ECHR. The Court determined that the applicant was stateless and emphasised that statelessness was a relevant factor towards establishing Croatia’s violation of the ECHR.