Every year, nations are asked by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees how many stateless people are within its borders. Last year, the Australian government told the UN that number was zero.



Under questioning in Senate estimates, it emerged there were 37 stateless people being held by the Australian government in immigration detention, on average for more than two-and-a-half years.

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Some, like Said Imasi, whose so far eight-year detention was reported by the Guardian in January, face indefinite detention: theoretically they can legally be incarcerated without charge or allegation until the end of their lives.

On Monday night, a new initiative was launched to shine a light on their plight. Professor Michelle Foster from the University of Melbourne will head the new Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness with a mandate to research the scale of, and reasons for, statelessness and to develop responses to it, and work to protect the human rights of stateless people.

“Australia’s record on stateless persons leaves much to be desired,” Foster wrote in Pursuit this month. “By way of example, Said has been recognised as a stateless person by the Australian Refugee Review Tribunal and yet the Australian government refuses to release him from detention, or grant him a protection visa.

“Since there is no Australian visa specifically for stateless persons, many are detained indefinitely in Australian immigration detention and an unknown number have also been detained offshore in centres on Nauru and Manus Island.”

Globally, it’s estimated up to 10 million people are currently stateless. The figure is only a estimate because the number can’t be truly gauged – the stateless are, almost by definition, the uncounted.

Foster told the Guardian the issue of statelessness has existed “since there were states”, but that modern international legal efforts have not kept pace with the problem.



“Statelessness became a bit of a forgotten issue … while with refugee law we have thousands of decisions emanating out of courts, we have a lot of understanding, statelessness has been overlooked from an academic point of view. It became clear there is needed, a focal point in this region, to better understand this issue, and to develop policy to address it.”

In 1954, a convention on stateless persons was brought into force, just three years after the – related – refugees convention. But while the refugees convention has become the international standard (though not always adhered to) for protection of those displaced by persecution, those without a country to call their own have not enjoyed the same rights.



“And there’s no reason for that,” Foster said. “If you look at the statelessness convention, it’s almost word for word [with the refugee convention]: you’re outside your country of origin, you require the same protection as a refugee. What stateless people really need are the protections to allow them to establish a life with dignity in a new place.”

Australia does not have a specific visa for stateless people, despite a public pledge in 2011 “committed to minimising the incidence of statelessness and to ensuring that stateless person are treated no less favourably than people with an identified nationality”. The UNHCR made a decade-long commitment in 2014 – I Belong – to eliminate statelessness by 2024.

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Forty percent of the world’s stateless are in Australia’s region, the Asia Pacific.

The Rohingya ethnic and religious minority of Myanmar are one of the largest and most at-risk stateless groups. Denationalised by that country’s then-ruling military junta in the 1980s, the Rohingya have long suffered ostracisation and persecution, one that has peaked in recent months, through a violent pogrom by the country’s military, which has murdered, raped and brutalised the minority population, razed villages to the ground and forced hundreds of thousands over the border.

“The Rohingya situation shows the vulnerability that follows from being stateless,” Foster said. “It demonstrates densationslisation as a form of persecution, and that has led to even more extreme version of persecution.”