1. Reported Stateless Person
Australia has experienced an overall upward trend in the number of reported stateless individuals in the country. In 2022, Australia reported 8,314 stateless persons to UNHCR. This number has increased significantly over the past 5 years, with 52 stateless persons reported in 2017 and 132 in 2018. In 2020, Australia reported 5,221 reported stateless persons and 7,700 in 2021. Notably, it was one of 5 countries that did not submit data to UNHCR’s global trends report in 2019, providing no reasoning as to why data reporting was paused that year. No comprehensive mapping of statelessness or statelessness status determination procedure in Australia has been undertaken to date.
The availability of data regarding the number of stateless persons in Australia is contingent upon reports sourced from the Australian Government. These reports only include statistics on those held in detention centers, those involved in the application process or who have been issued an Onshore Humanitarian Visa, and those who self-identify as stateless. Furthermore, Permanent Residents and Permanent Protection Visa holders and those who arrived through the annual Special Humanitarian Program or the national Migration Program are excluded from these statistics. These gaps in data collection imply that the actual number of stateless individuals in Australia is considerably higher than the reported figures provided by the government.
Australia lacks a comprehensive legal procedure for identifying stateless persons. However, it is noted that Australia has pledged to ‘better identify stateless persons and assess their claims. UNHCR has recommended that parties to the 1954 Convention (including Australia) establish a statelessness determination procedure (SDP), which is a formal centralized domestic process for determining the status of stateless persons. Without an SDP, it is difficult to determine who is owed rights and entitlements under the 1954 Convention. By establishing an SDP, there is an opportunity to create a specific visa category for recognized stateless persons, providing for ‘permanent protection’ with the possibility of naturalization, which conforms with the 1954 Convention. An SDP would also seek to assist in compiling accurate and comprehensive data about the extent of statelessness in Australia.
| Country | 2019 (year start) | 2020 (year end) | 2021 (year end) | 2022 (year end) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | – | 5221 | 7700 | 8314 |
Source: UNHCR, Global Trends: Forced Displacement from 2019-2022.
2. Persons at Risk of Statelessness
Indigenous and Aboriginal communities in Australia have historically faced marginalization, including a lack of access to social services and comparatively lower birth registration, contributing to an increased risk of statelessness within these populations. In response, Queensland implemented the Closing the Registration Gap Strategy Plan 2021-2024 to increase the birth registration rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with a goal to attain an 80% birth registration rate in the first 60 days after birth and 90% rate in the first year after birth by 2024. Barriers to birth registration which this Plan seeks to address include “lack of access to online and paper registration services in remote communities, financial difficulties caused by fees and penalties, confusion between registration and certification processes, language barriers and a shortage of culturally sensitive services, limited understanding of the significance of registration for children, and inconsistent information regarding the registration process”. Most recently, Queensland reported a 77.2% birth registration rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in 2022.
3. Stateless Refugees
All of the reported stateless persons in Australia are refugees, asylum seekers, or stateless persons from countries facing humanitarian conflicts held in immigration detention. UNHCR has noted that these figures are not representative of all stateless persons within Australia as the country lacks a statelessness status determination procedure.
In the mid-2010s, stateless individuals who applied for and were granted permanent residency in Australia predominantly hailed from countries like Iran and Iraq, with a large proportion of individuals being of Kurdish ethnicity. Australia has also seen refugee communities originating from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burma, Kuwait, Lebanon, and individuals of Arab, Rohingya, and Tibetan ethnicity. Refugee support services have seen an uptick in the proportion of stateless clients originating from the Middle East.
4. Undermined Nationalities
Australia does not have publicly available census data that captures persons classified as being “undetermined” or “unknown” nationality. Since 2015, Australian citizenship law has provided Ministerial powers to strip citizenship from dual nationals who had engaged in or were convicted of engaging in terrorist offences which demonstrated a ‘repudiation’ of their allegiance to Australia. These provisions operate extraterritorially, and frequently persons stripped of citizenship have been unaware of the occurrence. While this provision only applied to dual citizens, and contained protections against statelessness, there was at least one instance of citizenship deprivation in which the purported dual citizenship was denied by the second state and the legality of the act was questioned. Additionally, as noted below, in June 2022 the legality of some of the citizenship deprivation provisions was rejected by the High Court of Australia, the status of those stripped of Australian citizenship prior to this decision remains uncertain. At least twelve persons were stripped of their Australian citizenship under these provisions, however the total number is likely much higher.
Additionally, some Australians born in Papua New Guinea prior to its independence from Australia have had their Australian citizenship questioned and applications for renewal of passports denied in recent years after living decades of their life as Australian citizens. One such affected person successfully had their Australian citizenship recognised by the Federal Court of Australia in 2020, however, the implication of this decision on others in similar circumstances is unclear.
