Court name: Federal Administrative Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht)
Date of decision:

Applicants requested to be recognised as stateless in addition to having already been recognised as refugees. The judgments deals with the question of whether refugee status is comparable in rights to the status of nationals within the meaning of the exclusion clause in Article 1(2) of the 1954 Convention. The Court sides with the applicants confirming their right to be recognised as stateless persons in addition to having been granted asylum-based residence status. 

Court name: Constitutional Court of Austria (Verfassungsgerichtshof)
State: Austria
Date of decision:

After having been born, having lived, worked and and paid taxes in Austria his whole life the applicant was told he is not entitled to unemployment benefits as he did not have a right to work in Austria. While he was granted Austrian nationality upon application, he argued that he was entitled to unemployment benefits also in the time frame between becoming unemployed and acquiring the nationality, invoking his statelessness, and lack of implementation of Statelessness Conventions by Austria. The Court denies direct applicability of the Statelessness Conventions in Austria, and rules against the applicant. 

Court name: Constitutional Court of Austria (Verfassungsgerichtshof)
State: Austria
Date of decision:

The applicant received an assurance of acquiring Austrian nationality if she renounces her former, Serbian, nationality. Shortly after the renunciation the applicant lost her job and was unable to find alternative employment due to her statelessness, which resulted in her no longer complying with the income requirement for acquiring Austrian nationality. The Court declares unconstitutional the law which requires continuous fulfilment of all the conditions for naturalisation, even after Austrian nationality has been conditionally granted and the former nationality has been renounced. 

Court name: Brussels Court of Appeal
State: Belgium
Date of decision:

The judgment relies on earlier Constitutional Court judgments that have established that stateless persons who lost their nationality involuntarily and demonstrated that they do not have the right to permanent legal residence elsewhere should get residence rights in Belgium on an equal footing with refugees, and that the necessary national legislation is lacking to give effect to such rights. The applicant has a criminal record and was denied residence rights on that basis, but the Court ruled that criminal convictions are irrelevant for his residence rights, and ordered authorities to regularise his residence until new legislation comes to force that regulates the stateless persons' right to residence. 

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: Dnipropetrovsk Administrative Court of Appeal
State: Ukraine
Date of decision:

The applicant refused to exchange his USSR passport for the Ukrainian one in the aftermath of dissolution of the USSR, and was subsequently denied his retirement benefits due to lack of a Ukrainian passport. He requested the Court to establish that he is a stateless person, to release him from Ukrainian nationality, and grant him legal residence rights in Ukraine. The Court concluded that the applicant is in fact a Ukrainian national, even if he refuses to apply for a passport, as the law attributes Ukrainian nationality to all former USSR nationals who lived in Ukraine at a specified time, regardless of the will, actions or inactions of affected persons. 

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

The Federal Fiscal Court decided that on a case in which a stateless person applied for child benefits from the German government. The Court held that neither Art. 24 nor Art. 29 of the 1954 Statelessness Convention provide for a right to claim child benefit and that this ruling is not unconstitutional.

Court name: Social Welfare Court Munich
State: Germany
Date of decision:

The plaintiff sought parental allowance for her daughter and the defendant rejected the demand due to insufficient prove of identity.The court determined that the plaintiff is entitled to a parental allowance. The Act on Parental Allowance and Parental Leave (Bundeselterngeld- und Elternzeitgesetz) does not provide for the exclusion of benefits in case of general doubts about the identity of the applicant.

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

The refusal to grant family allowance to a recognised stateless person because of the lack of a residence permit amounts to discrimination between stateless persons and refugees. Such difference of treatment arises from a legislative gap that had been identified in an earlier judgement and not filled yet by the legislator.

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

The absence of any legislative provision granting persons recognised as stateless in Belgium a residence right, comparable to that enjoyed by recognised refugees, is discriminatory.  

Court name: Human Rights Committee
Date of decision:

The author of the communication fled with her family from Uzbekistan to the Netherlands. After their asylum application got denied by the Dutch authorities, she was told that she had lost her Uzbek citizenship because she had not registered with the Uzbek Embassy within five years of leaving the country. Various application for social and child benefits got rejected  by various national courts. The author maintains that she has exhausted domestic remedies with regard to her claims of violations of her right to family life and non-discrimination and of the rights of her child. The author submits that,by denying her application for a child budget, the State party violated her and Y’s rights under articles 23(1), 24(3) and 26, read in conjunction with articles 23(1) and 24(1), of the Covenant, as well as Y’s rights under article 24(1) including minors. In light of the level of vulnerability of the child and the inability of the mother to provide for the child, the Committee concluded that the State party has the obligation to ensure the child's physical and psychological well-being are protected. By not doing so, the State violated the child's rights under article 24(1).

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.