Stateless in Germany 'denied the right to have rights'

For people like Christiana Bukalo, 29, born in Germany but stateless, everyday life can become a challenge at any time. Whether its opening a bank account, booking a hotel, getting married, pursuing a career as a civil servant — you need an ID for everything. But which state will issue you a passport if you don't have any nationality at all?

"You don't have freedom to travel because a travel document is required. You have difficulties when it comes to getting a job," Bukalo told DW. "I know people who couldn't finish their studies because they would have had to show a birth certificate to take the exam at the end. Also, stateless people don't have the right to vote, even if they've always lived here."

Bukalo is the daughter of West African parents whose nationality could not be verified by German authorities. She is one of a growing number of stateless people living in Germany — currently some 126,000 people. Many of them are Palestinians, Kurds or former citizens of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia — states that don't exist.

Bukalo learned from an early age what it means to have no nationality. "Even as a child, you get the message that you don't belong," she said. "That you're not supposed to stay here, but at the same time you can't leave either. It's very banal things that turn into a problem: Student exchanges, skiing trips abroad, none of that is possible. And of course, you have a great sense of shame, because you're asked to explain something that has never been explained to you."

'Statefree': A voice for stateless people

Two years ago, Bukalo decided to give stateless people a voice and founded the human rights organization Statefree in Munich. The goal was not only to inform the wider public and to bring together those affected, but also to make demands on politicians.

"In Germany, we have an extreme reproduction of statelessness, as no way has been found to deal with stateless children who are born here," she said. "We demand that stateless children born in Germany have a right to German citizenship."

In Germany, it's the parentage that counts, not the place of birth. If the parents are stateless, so is their child. As a result, a third of all stateless people in Germany are children, though Bukalo also knows 65-year-olds who were born in Germany and are still stateless.

Statefree had high hopes for the new citizenship law proposed by the current center-left government of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), but the issue of statelessness has so far not appeared in any draft law.

A spokesperson for the German Interior Ministry said in response to a DW question: "The concerns of stateless people are already sufficiently taken into account in the citizenship law. In addition, the general regulations for acquiring German citizenship apply to stateless people, since stateless people are also foreigners in the sense of citizenship law."

Europe mulls deportations, not integration

The reform of the new citizenship law, which includes rapid naturalizations and incentives for skilled immigrants, comes at a time when the debate on migration is also at the top of Germany's political agenda.

Bukalo isn't surprised that her campaign has failed to make much progress. "I explain this to myself on the one hand with the politicians' lack of knowledge about statelessness and on the other hand with the general political situation: the shift to the right in Europe," she said. "Germany's more progressive parties are having a hard time standing up for supposedly 'progressive' issues that have long been part of the status quo in countries like Spain or Portugal."

No uniform legal procedures

Judith Beyer, an anthropology professor at the University of Konstanz, has been researching statelessness since she came across the topic seven years ago on a research trip to Myanmar, where 700,000 members of the Rohingya Muslim minority were fleeing persecution. They now live in Bangladesh but are considered stateless under international law.

Beyer works as an expert witness in a UK court when stateless people are in asylum proceedings. "Statelessness is a problem that is really not yet in the public eye in Germany," she told DW.

Take the judiciary, for example: While in the UK experts like Beyer examine the life stories of stateless persons, and their expertise is incorporated into the final verdict on their status, in Germany the decision often rests solely with the judges.

There are also no standardized procedures in Germany for determining statelessness — it is up to municipal authorities, which means people in Munich sometimes get different decisions than they would in Hamburg or Cologne.

"The bottom line is that it depends on the individual who makes the decision," said Beyer. "That's what many stateless people keep complaining about: there is no legal certainty. Quite often it's not malicious intent at all, but simply a lack of knowledge about how to deal with stateless people."

Around 30,000 people in Germany like Bukalo have been officially recognized as stateless, which means they can apply for naturalization after six years of residency. But almost 100,000 individuals are categorized as persons with unclear nationality: refugees who have no documents to prove their identity, such as the Rohingya who were expatriated from Bangladesh.

Being stateless is a violation of human rights, said SPD politician Sawsan Chebli. She was born in Berlin to stateless Palestinian parents and wasn't naturalized until she was 15. Beyer agrees: Stateless people are effectively "denied the right to have rights," she said.

This article was originally written in German.

Correction, October 29, 2023: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Judith Beyer's title. She is a professor of anthropology. DW apologizes for the error.

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