The Impact of Childhood Statelessness

Born Stateless

No child chooses statelessness, having neither a nationality nor a country to call his or her own. It occurs when refugees flee and children are born in displaced persons camps or because of discriminatory laws excluding minority groups from citizenship, or as a result of political change and the redrawing of borders. I was born in Germany to Polish parents. Although I was issued a German birth certificate, my birthplace did not welcome me. German citizenship was and still is determined by inheritance from parents and not by place of birth. I grew up in the United States but did not feel American during childhood. I felt uncomfortable, anxious, and confused about who I was. American citizenship at age 13 did not automatically erase the psychological impact of statelessness.

Who Am I?

For most people, nationality is a part of identity, one of the fundamental ways in which the world defines them and they define themselves. For those born with no country to call their own, no flag to inspire identification, statelessness leads to a deep crisis of identity. With neither a nationality nor a cultural identity, they feel invisible, as if they do not exist. Statelessness causes alienation, feeling isolated from society, separated; there is a sense of dislocation, a feeling of being lost, rejected, unsettled, insecure. There are feelings of not belonging, of being excluded that endure into adulthood even after citizenship is attained.

Most do not recognize me in the photograph on my citizenship papers. Some say the photo looks like a mug shot, while others say I like look a Black person. Statelessness makes people feel like their very existence is a crime. Struggling to identify myself with mankind, I identified with others marginalized and discriminated against. My self presentation as an adolescent was a meticulously crafted performative response. I was seeking visibility, trying too hard to fit in with the big hair, eye makeup, and white lipstick of the early 60s exaggerated and inappropriate for my 13 years of age. No amount of thick makeup could hide the strong emotions inside.

Childhood Statelessness in Today’s World

Although it is a fundamental right of all children to have a nationality, The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that nowadays there are three million stateless children worldwide with a child born stateless at least every 10 minutes. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, a set of international laws adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989 gave all children basic human rights including the right to a name and a nationality. Although these laws were universally agreed to by the European countries, they are failing to take adequate steps to ensure that all children born within their borders acquire a nationality. An excellent New York Times story illuminating this problem is As Refugees Flee, Thousands of Children Have No Country to Call Their Own.

Widespread childhood statelessness does not bode well for the future of a society whose social structure appears to be in a state of disintegration. Children growing up dislocated and confused about identity, who feel invisible and don’t fit in, are vulnerable and need special attention.