This seminar will allow interested parties to explore the right to a nationality as a fundamental right of everyone - wherever they may reside, legally or illegally - also widely seen as a gateway right to the enjoyment of other basic rights, including the right to work, education, health care, reside and return to their home country. The objective of the seminar is to provide attendees with a deeper understanding of how not having a nationality hinders individuals from enjoying their very basic rights that most people take for granted and why statelessness should primarily be seen as a violation of the human right to a nationality. 

According to the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons a stateless person is "not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law." Statelessness affects millions of individuals worldwide, including tens of thousands in Sweden. At the end of 2018 in Sweden, there were approx. 31,819 persons of concern under UNHCR’s statelessness mandate, of whom 19,782 were registered as stateless and 12,037 as having “unknown nationality.” The stateless population in Sweden consists primarily of migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers and individuals born stateless in Sweden to foreign-born parents. Whereas Sweden is a State Party to all conventions proclaiming the right to a nationality, as well as the two statelessness conventions, there are important shortcomings that continue to produce new cases of statelessness. 

Working towards the goals of UNHCR's ambitious #IBelong Campaign to end statelessness by 2024, in 2016 UNHCR published a 'Mapping Statelessness in Sweden'. The Mapping provides a comprehensive analysis and a set of recommendations concerning Swedish legislation, policy, and administrative practices on identification, reduction, and prevention of statelessness and protection of stateless persons on Swedish territory in relation to the relevant international standards, in particular the two statelessness conventions. Global momentum to strengthen efforts to end statelessness was created by the recent High-Level Segment on Statelessness in October 2019, where Sweden made four pledges to reduce statelessness, including to address challenges identified in the recommendations of the UNHCR Mapping which will be presented in detail during the seminar. In the second part of the seminar, the mission to end statelessness in Sweden and planned activities of the newly launched Swedish Organization Against Statelessness (SOAS) will be presented by SOAS founder to allow participants to see the human face of the statelessness phenomenon and learn about the everyday reality faced by stateless persons living in Sweden through personal testimonies shared by individuals affected by statelessness.