Court name: Kherson Regional Administrative Court
State: Ukraine
Date of decision:

The applicant received Ukrainian nationality in 2008, and as part of the relevant evidence he submitted a court ruling establishing the fact of his permanent residency in Ukraine. Soon after, he renounced his Vietnamese nationality. In 2011 there was another court ruling which reversed the ruling about the applicant's permanent residence in Ukraine. This prompted the authorities to cancel the decision on the applicant's acquisition of Ukrainian nationality, rendering him stateless. 

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

The Ukrainian nationality of the applicant and her two children was withdrawn in 2013, on the basis that the applicant committed fraud when acquiring the nationality in 2006. The allegation of fraud was based on the fact that a case file was missing from a Court which had earlier established the legal fact of the applicant's permanent residence. The applicant argued that the missing file is not her fault and cannot be construed as "fraud" on her side, and the Court agreed with her, annulling the decision that resulted in the loss of her and her children's nationality. 

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

Applicant's Ukrainian nationality was withdrawn on the basis of voluntary acquisition of Canadian nationality. The applicant argued, among others, that he was not a Canadian national at the time of withdrawal of his Ukrainian nationality, and that he became stateless as a result of the withdrawal. Court dismissed his arguments as he did not provide sufficient evidence as to the circumstances of loss of his Canadian nationality.

Court name: Versailles Administrative Court
State: France
Date of decision:

The applicant belongs to Biharie minority in Bangladesh, and applied for the recognition of his statelessness in France, submitting additional documentary evidence that access to Bangladeshi nationality is restricted for him. The Court could not make sense of all the documents submitted, and requested both the applicant and OFPRA to submit additional information and observations regarding the nature of the documents and the circumstances in which they were issued.

Court name: Marseille Administrative Court
State: France
Date of decision:

Mr. B and Mrs. C, a married couple who got recognised as stateless by OFPRA, did not mention they had a daughter (Miss A, the applicant) when applying for statelessness status. When Miss A also applied for a statelessness status, and provided a birth certificate proving that Mr. B and Mrs. C are her parents, OFPRA denied her application, partially because they doubted the parental relations, and partially because they considered that she did not take the necessary steps to get recognised as a national by either Italy or the successor states of Yugoslavia - where her parents are from. The Court ruled that OFPRA based its decision on an error of assessment, and ordered it to grant Miss A the statelessness status. 

Court name: Council of State of the Netherlands (Raad van State)
Date of decision:

The case concerns a child born in the Netherlands to an undocumented mother of Chinese origin. The child is registered in the municipal records as having an "unknown" nationality. The mother attempts to register him as "stateless" to strengthen his claim to Dutch citizenship, but cannot meet the high standard of proof set by the municipality for registering statelessness. The Court sides with the municipality in this case, but implies that the legislator ought to establish a statelessness determination procedure in the Netherlands.

Court name: Council of State of the Netherlands
Date of decision:

Applicant was born in Macedonia and lived in the Netherlands for 38 years. His path to naturalisation was inhibited by the registration of his nationality status as "unknown" in the municipal records, which he requested to change to "stateless", arguing that he has never acquired the Macedonian nationality. The Council of State sided with the municipality that denied the request, maintaining that it has not been "irrefutably established" that the applicant is not a Macedonian national. The judgment refers to the Dutch legislative initiative on the statelessness determination, implying that it is needed, and that the municipal registry is not a statelessness determination procedure.  

Court name: High Court of Crimean Republic (Верховный Суд Республики Крым)
Date of decision:

The case concerns an applicant who was a Ukrainian citizen and a resident of Crimean Peninsular at the time of Crimean annexation to Russia. He was originally issued with a Russian passport in 2014, which was subsequently confiscated as a government initiated verification procedure established he did not comply with the relevant residency requirements to be considered a Russian citizen. The Court, on appeal, sided with the applicant, confirming his right to Russian citizenship despite not complying with all the formal requirements. 

In its reasoning the Court relied heavily on the importance to take all the relevant and factual evidence when establishing the legal fact of residence, and basing it on a broad range of evidence about the person's personal and professional life, as well as intentions, not the merely the strict formalistic rules of residence registration, especially in light of consequences of denial of access to citizenship for the applicant, and the circumstances of state succession. The Court refers extensively to international legal instruments, even those Russia hasn't ratified, such as the European Convention on Nationality and its anti-statelessness safeguards, the CoE Convention on the Avoidance of Statelessness in Relation to State Succession, as well as art. 15 UDHR, and other international legal instruments.

Court name: Court of Cassation
State: Italy
Date of decision:

The Supreme Court decision laid down the principle according to which the statelessness determination procedure requires evidence of: (i) the lack of nationality of the State with which the person has significant connections and (ii) the legal or factual impossibility of obtaining the nationality of that State.

Court name: Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw
State: Poland
Date of decision:

R.G. unsuccessfully applied for refugee status in 2007. In 2013 he submitted a new application claiming that he had become a stateless person after country F had refused to confirm his citizenship, and that therefore new factual circumstance had arisen that justified submitting another application.

The Court pointed out that the refusal of one country to confirm his citizenship does not automatically mean that no country will confirm his citizenship and that the question of whether he is a stateless person is irrelevant when assessing the conditions for granting refugee status or other forms of international protection.

Court name: Administrative Jurisdiction Division from the Council of State
Date of decision:

Request to have nationality changed from "unknown" to "stateless" denied, as it cannot be ruled out that the applicant's father has Macedonian nationality. Applicant did not provide enough evidence to determine statelessness.

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: Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court)
State: Germany
Date of decision:

If stateless individuals are not lawfully staying in the country, Contracting States may provide travel documents but the decision to grant them is discretionary, provided it is free from arbitrariness. A person applying for travel documents can be reasonably expected to return to their previous place of residence and apply for the nationality of their country of origin.

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

The recognition of stateless status cannot be denied on the basis that the applicant has not undertaken the necessary steps in order to regain the lost nationality, even if it was voluntarily renounced.

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

In order to be recognised as stateless, the applicant does not have to prove that she or he cannot acquire another nationality.

Court name: Court of Appeal
Date of decision:

The appellant requested the revocation of a deportation order on the grounds that he was stateless. The appeal raises two points of principle: first, the standard of proof applicable to the determination of whether a person qualifies for the status of a stateless person as defined in the 1954 Convention; and secondly, the relevance of a finding that a person is stateless for the purposes of revocation of a deportation order. The court determined that a person claiming to be stateless must provide evidence satisfying the standard of balance of probabilities.

Court name: High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division
Date of decision:

A child (MK) was born in the UK in 2010 and her parents were both nationals of India. MK had made an application for registration as a British citizen. Paragraph 3 of Schedule 2 of the British Nationality Act 1981 requires that the child 'is and always has been stateless'. The key issue was whether, in order to be considered stateless, the child was required to have sought (and failed) to acquire the nationality of her parents. The Court determined that there was no requirement to have sought the nationality of the parents, and MK was, if she met the other relevant requirements, entitled to register as a British citizen, as she was and always had been stateless at the date of the relevant Home Office decision. Further, the Secretary of State could require an applicant to prove the relevant facts, but could not lawfully 'impose requirements that cannot, or practically cannot, be met'.

Court name: Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo)
State: Spain
Date of decision:

The applicant is a Saharawi man who was born in the former Spanish Sahara and who, in 1979, fled to the Saharawi refugee camps in Tindouf (Algeria), where he lived until 2005, when he arrived in Spain after being issued a passport by the Algerian authorities. In Spain, he applied for statelessness status. The Ministry of Interior rejected his application based on his Algerian passport, but this decision was overturned, on appeal, by the High Court, which found that Algerian passports are just travel documents.  

Court name: Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo)
State: Spain
Date of decision:

The case concerns a Saharawi woman who was not recognised as a stateless person by the Ministry of Interior, in a decision which was later upheld by the High Court. The Supreme Court overturned both the lower decisions.