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The applicant appealed to the Supreme Court the rejection of his application for the statelessness determination procedure by the Court and the Court of Appeal, on the ground of failure to meet the evidentiary requirements. The Supreme Court rejected the appeal, finding that the lower court had correctly held that the condition of stateless persons is that of those who have lost their original nationality and have not acquired that of their State of residence, at the same time not being endowed with guarantees equivalent to those of nationality or with special protection by international bodies. The applicant had not submitted such proof, as he had only attached his own 20-years' residence in Italy and a temporary recognition of refugee status.

The case involves a complaint by the applicant against the refusal of the Director of the Territorial Unite "Migration" in Dobrich to recognise her as a stateless person and issue the corresponding identity document. The Administrative Court of Dobrich considered the case and ruled that the refusal violated Art. 28 of the 1954 Convention and Article 59 of the Bulgarian Identity Documents Act. Moreover, the Court stated that the absence of a body governed by specific legal provisions at the national level does not justify denying rights to stateless persons. The Court highlighted Bulgaria´s ratification of the 1954 Convention and emphasised the need for administrative assistance to stateless people.

In 1991, Slovenia gained its independence. Subsequently, legal issues arose concerning the legal status of nationals from other republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) who were lawfully and permanently residing in Slovenia during this transition. They could, up to a certain date, choose to apply for Slovenian nationality. If they did not apply or if their application was rejected, the newly passed Law on Foreigners (ZTuj) would apply to them in accordance with Article 81(2) of ZTuj. However, for those nationals of other SFRY republics that did not opt for Slovenian nationality or whose application was rejected, this law failed to define the conditions for obtaining permanent residence. These individuals found themselves in a legal vacuum, leading to uncertainty and challenges regarding their legal status, facing possible deportation and limited access to essential services. In this decision, the Constitutional Court of Slovenia declared that Article 81(2) of ZTuj was unconstitutional as it had not outlined the conditions for acquiring permanent residence for this specific group of individuals.

The respondent was deprived of his British nationality by a decision taken by the Secretary of State for the Home Department (“SSHD”) under section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981. The SSHD argued that the deprivation decision did not render the respondent stateless but rather it was the respondent’s failure to re-apply for Iraqi nationality, which he had previously held, that did so. The Supreme Court dismissed this argument and refused the appeal.

The applicant appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn the decisions rejecting his application for recognition of his statelessness status from the first instance court and the Court of Appeal on the ground of an error in the choice of procedure (chamber procedure rather than the ordinary recognition procedure).

The case raised one point of principle: what type of court procedure should be applied in determining statelessness. The Supreme Court sustained the Court of Appeal’s previous decision determining that the ordinary procedure of cognition (procedimento ordinario di cognizione) is the type of court procedure to be applied.

Shamima Begum, aged 15, left the UK for Syria to live with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (“ISIS”). She was deprived of her British citizenship by a decision taken by the Secretary of State for the Home Department on national security grounds under section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981. On appeal from the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (“SIAC”), the Court of Appeal held that the decision to deprive Begum of her citizenship was lawful and dismissed the appeal.

The case concerns the revocation of the applicant’s Danish nationality by the Danish Ministry of Immigration and Integration, on the basis of her membership in the Islamic State. The Court held that the Danish courts had conducted an adequate and sufficient assessment of the decision to revoke the applicant’s nationality, and therefore rejected the application as inadmissible.

The applicant was a former Soviet national who served in a military unit based in Tajikistan. During his station in Tajikistan, the 1991 Russian Citizenship Act came into force, leading him to move to Russia and continue his military service there. Several decades later, the Russian Ministry of the Interior concluded that the applicant had not acquired Russian nationality because he had not been living in Russia when the Russian Citizenship Act entered into force, subsequently destroying the applicant's passport. The Court found a violation of Article 8 ECHR for the interference with the applicant's private and family life and the excessive formalism of Russian authorities. 

The applicant, a stateless Palestinian, fled Syria due to the ongoing civil war in 2013. The Bulgarian National Agency for Refugees granted him humanitarian status in 2014, and in 2018, his status was revoked due to information received by the National Security Agency that revealed the applicant presented a security risk. The applicant appealed this decision, stating that it violated Article 8 in conjunction with Article 13 ECHR. The Court declared the application inadmissible based on the non-exhaustion of domestic remedies. 

The applicant had renounced his Bosnian-Herzegovinian citizenship after having received an assurance that he would obtain Croatian citizenship, and became stateless. However, Croatia subsequently refused his citizenship application on national security grounds, without providing the reasons for this decision. He was issued an expulsion order and his permanent residence was terminated. While the applicant was in immigration detention, his Bosnian-Herzegovinian citizenship was restored and he left Croatia voluntarily. The Court found that the limitation in the applicant’s procedural rights in his expulsion proceedings had not protected him against arbitrariness, and found a violation of Article 1 of Protocol n. 7. The remaining complaints were either found inadmissible or were not examined by the Court.

This case concerns the refusal of a municipality to grant Dutch nationality to an undocumented, stateless child born in the Netherlands and who has always lived in the country, because the child had not been residing lawfully in the country for at least three years, as provided by the applicable law. The Dutch court ruled that the refusal should be set aside and nationality granted. The court found that according to the 1961 Convention, only habitual residence is required. It notes that the amended Dutch Nationality Act, in force since October 2023, only provides for the requirement of habitual residence and no longer imposes a lawful residence requirement, and therefore this condition should not have been applied in this case, as it is contrary to international law

The applicant (allegedly a former Cameroonian national who had lost his identity documents) applied for a declaration of statelessness to the Defendant authority who rejected the application on the ground that the applicant did not have any identity documents and failed to cooperate during the verification of his identity by not trying to obtain such documents. This decision was upheld by the court of first instance and was subsequently challenged by the applicant before the Hungarian Supreme Court (Kúria). The Supreme Court held that the application for review was well-founded and confirmed that the definition of statelessness also covers cases where the practice of the competent foreign authority shows that it has ceased to consider an individual as a national. The Court reconfirmed that the burden of proof is shared in the statelessness determination procedure and further clarified that an applicant cannot automatically be held to violate their duty to cooperate if they do not possess identity documents and cannot acquire such documents due to reasonable circumstances.

The applicant is a stateless person of Palestinian origin who was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon. He applied for protection in the UK on several grounds, including that he was at risk of harm in breach of Article 3 ECHR because of attempts to recruit him to extremist armed factions in the camp, but his application was rejected. The ECtHR accepted that there was no risk in case of return to Lebanon, and found no information supporting the applicant’s argument in a EUAA (former EASO) report regarding the recruitment of young Palestinians in refugee camps in Lebanon. The Court found no violation of Article 3 ECHR.

The Polish Supreme Administrative Court decided that according to the law of Israel, a Jewish Polish national who settled back to Israel during World War II obtained Israeli nationality even before the enactment of the Israeli Nationality Act of 1952. As a consequence, under Polish law, that person may have lost its Polish nationality under the Polish Citizenship Act from 20 January 1920.

The applicant, a stateless person, had been sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment in a strict regime facility as well as payment of a fine and a so-called limitation of freedom for two years (i.e. an imposition of certain restrictions of movement, such as an order to stay within a specific municipality or not to attend certain places, after release from a correctional facility). The applicant challenged the decision regarding the limitation of freedom as it cannot be imposed under the Russian Criminal Code when the sentenced person is stateless. The Supreme Court agreed with the applicant and ordered that the limitation of freedom is removed from the sentence.

The applicant, a stateless person, had been sentenced to 19 years of imprisonment in a strict regime facility as well as to payment of a fine and a limitation of freedom for two years (which is an imposition of certain restrictions of movement, such as leaving a specific municipality or going to certain public places, after release from a correctional facility). The applicant challenged the sentence on various grounds. The prosecutor's office filed an appeal in the applicant’s favour, requesting to lift the imposition of a limitation of freedom as the relevant law does not apply to stateless individuals. The Supreme Court agreed with the prosecutor’s office and ordered the amendment of the sentence.

The applicants are a father and his three sons who became Russian nationals between 2002 and 2004. In 2022, the prosecutor´s office for Shatura City in the Moscow Region filed a lawsuit to declare the applicants’ naturalisations void as a consequence of having allegedly provided false documents for their naturalisation applications. The Shatura City Court sided with the prosecutor’s office and declared that the applicants had never acquired Russian nationality.

The case concerns the loss of Danish nationality by the applicant who was born outside Denmark to a Danish mother and had spent less than a year in Denmark prior to her 22nd birthday, in accordance with the Law of Danish Nationality. The Court held that Article 20 TFEU, read in conjunction with Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, did not preclude such legislation by Member States, provided that the persons concerned had the opportunity to lodge, within a reasonable period, an application for the retention or recovery of nationality, for the authorities to examine the proportionality of the consequences of the loss of nationality from the perspective of EU law, and allow the retention or recovery of nationality. However, the period must extend for a reasonable time beyond the date by which the person concerned reaches the age stated in the legislation, and cannot begin to run unless the authorities have informed the person of the loss of nationality, and the right to apply for the maintenance or recovery of nationality.

The applicant’s application for statelessness status was denied (both in first and second instance) due to a lack of sufficient proof to determine a difficulty in establishing a nationality, paired with a substantial lack of cooperation of the applicant with the authorities. The Court ruled that the applicant, of Kurdish origin, did not provide coherent and sufficient evidence to support his application.

The applicant’s application for statelessness status was denied due to the lack of sufficient proof to determine a difficulty in establishing a nationality, paired with a substantial lack of cooperation of the applicant with the authorities. The Court ruled that the applicant, declaring being of Somalian origin but eventually confirmed of unknown origin, did not provide coherent and sufficient evidence to support his application.

The Court found a violation of Article 8, in a groundbreaking case regarding children’s right to a birth certificate. The applicant was born in Mexico and repatriated to Spain after an earthquake. Despite his mother’s attempts, his birth was not registered upon arrival in Spain as the necessary documentation had been destroyed by the earthquake in Mexico, and he was issued with an ID card only at 21. The Court found that, upon becoming aware of the situation, Spanish authorities were under a positive obligation to assist the applicant in obtaining documentation and the failure to do so resulted in a violation of Article 8 ECHR.

The case was brought to the Supreme Court by 16 individuals who are descendants of a Cypriot citizen and a Turkish citizen, claiming that they applied to register as citizens of Cyprus but never received a response from the authorities. They argued that they are stateless and that Cyprus failed to grant them Cypriot citizenship. The Supreme Court noted the adverse consequences of statelessness, referring to jurisprudence of the ECtHR, but found that all but one applicant are Turkish citizens. For all applicants, the Court concluded that the authorities’ failure to respond to the citizenship applications fell under the jurisdiction of the Administrative Court, and thus rejected the applications.

The asylum application submitted by a refugee of Palestinian origin with Syrian travel document was rejected and the applicant was provisionally admitted in Switzerland, as the enforcement of removal has proven unreasonable. The applicant and his family submitted a subsequent application for recognition of statelessness. The Swiss Federal Court recognised the statelessness of Palestinian refugees from Syria, for whom UNRWA protection or assistance is objectively no longer accessible.

The asylum application filed by applicants of unknown nationality of Palestinian origin with Syrians travel documents was rejected and the applicants were temporarily admitted in Switzerland, as the enforcement of removal had proven unreasonable. The refugees submitted a subsequent application for recognition of statelessness, which was approved by the Swiss Federal Court. The Swiss Federal Court assessed the legitimate interest of the request and specified the legal requirements and advantages of being recognised a stateless person, to which temporarily admitted persons would not be entitled.

Eight children of Moroccan nationality born and raised in Melilla, a Spanish enclave city in Morocco, to migrant parents, who had irregular administrative status submitted four different communications to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Even though the children had the right to attend public school by law, they were unable to access public education in Melilla in practice, because they were requested to provide documents that were difficult or impossible to obtain given their irregular administrative status. The Committee on the Rights of the Child found that Spain had violated the applicants’ right to non-discrimination and to education under Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, read in conjunction with Article 28, and Article 6 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure.