A new narrative of statelessness

Abstract

As we approach the eight-year mark in UNHCR’s decade-long commitment to advance the rights of stateless persons, known as the #Ibelong campaign, there is much to celebrate. Statelessness is firmly on the agenda in conversations about forced migration, national security, human development, and the fight to end systemic discrimination. Significant challenges remain, as millions of people are still forced to endure statelessness and some governments continue to persecute stateless populations while denying the fundamental human right to a nationality. But awareness of the problem of statelessness has arguably never been so widespread, while civil society organisations that directly incorporate the voices and experiences of stateless persons surge, and think tanks and academic programs flourish. High quality scholarship on statelessness has increased exponentially, and Dr. Mira Siegelberg has made a tremendously important contribution to this growing body of work with Statelessness: A Modern History. Like many scholars and advocates for the rights of stateless persons, I often tell a story of global statelessness that begins with the atrocities of World War II that triggered mass statelessness in the post-war period that culminated in the 1954 Statelessness Convention. After reading Dr. Siegelberg’s book, I will never tell the story the same way again. Statelessness: A Modern History offers a meticulous reconstruction of the varied contributions of artists, scholars, and policy makers to the understanding of statelessness in the years between the First and Second World Wars. She situates statelessness in some of the most prominent debates about international law and relations in modern history, most notably whether the individual is an appropriate subject of international law and whether a political order beyond the confines of the nation-state is desirable. Dr. Siegelberg succeeds in showing that statelessness played a significant role in the development of international legal thought throughout the interwar period. In uncovering the contributions of statelessness to legal