Escape options limited for the stateless

• Published date: 18 April 2022
• Publication title: Otago Daily Times (New Zealand)

WHEN the air raid sirens sound at night, Svitlana Honcharova takes her two young sons to the cellar under their apartment in the Ukrainian city of Sumy and prays they will still be alive in the morning

Although thousands have fled Russia’s bombardment of Sumy in the far northeast, Honcharova dares not leave as she is stateless, meaning she is not recognised as a citizen of any country.

‘‘I’m afraid that if I decided to leave I wouldn’t be able to cross checkpoints or borders because I don’t have documents,’’ Honcharova said in a video call.

‘‘I’m also very scared they’d separate me from my children because I have no proof that I’m their mother.’’

Ukraine is home to tens of thousands of stateless people, many of whom — without proof of identity — have been left effectively trapped in areas of fighting as checkpoints proliferate across the country.

Although Honcharova has lived in Ukraine almost all her life, she has no right to formal employment or healthcare, and cannot open a bank account, own property or even marry.

The United Nations estimates Ukraine is home to about 36,000 stateless people who live on the margins of society, deprived of basic rights and services. Some experts on statelessness said the real number was probably much higher.

They include many like Honcharova who fell through the gaps following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and a significant proportion of Ukraine’s large ethnic minority Roma population.

Others at risk of statelessness include people who have fled conflict in the eastern separatist Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as an estimated 60,000 children born in these territories and the Crimean peninsula seized by Russia in 2014.

‘‘The war has now made stateless people’s lives even more complicated and precarious, with many stranded in places ravaged by fighting,’’ said Chris Nash, director of the European Network on Statelessness, a civil society alliance.

‘‘Perhaps most telling of their predicament is the fact that even if they manage to flee Ukraine, it remains unclear if they’ll be able to return once the war has ended.’’

Russia’s invasion on February 24 has uprooted a quarter of Ukraine’s 44 million people, including more than 4 million who have fled abroad, mostly to European countries.

The European Union has granted Ukrainians the right to live, work and access social welfare in the 27-nation bloc, but Nash said the emergency measures risked excluding many stateless people.

‘‘We urge all EU countries to...