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Climate change puts millions at risk of statelessness
Global guidelines call for stronger legal safeguards, birth registration and cross-border protection for people at risk
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KATHMANDU, Sept 28: Climate change is not only displacing people from their homes, livelihoods and places of residence; it is also putting their nationality and legal relationship with the state at risk. As floods, cyclones, sea-level rise, droughts and other climate-related disasters force people to move, they face growing risks of losing identity documents and birth records, being unable to register births, and finding their legal nationality status unclear after crossing international borders.
To address these emerging risks, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness (PMCS) at the University of Melbourne have released the Global Recommendations on Nationality and Statelessness in the Context of Climate Change.
According to the two organisations, the recommendations are the first global recommendations specifically focused on nationality and statelessness in the context of climate change.
Released last week, the report brings climate change, nationality and statelessness within a single policy framework. It notes that climate change policies and statelessness policies have traditionally been addressed as separate areas, even as the climate crisis is creating increasingly complex links between the two.
According to UNHCR, around 4.5 million people were stateless worldwide at the end of 2025. About 90 percent of them live in countries highly exposed to climate change. The report cautions that the actual number of stateless people could be considerably higher, as many live in marginalised circumstances and reliable data are unavailable in some countries.
A large number of stateless people in South and Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East live in areas facing significant climate risks. According to UNHCR figures cited in the report, Bangladesh alone has around 1.2 million stateless people, while Myanmar has more than 519,000, Thailand more than 610,000 and Malaysia more than 134,000.
However, there is no reliable global figure for how many people have become stateless specifically because of climate change. The report identifies this lack of data as a major challenge. The relationship between climate-related displacement and statelessness is often indirect, developing through a combination of legal, social and administrative processes, making it difficult to determine how many new cases of statelessness are attributable to climate change.
The report therefore calls for the identification and collection of data on stateless people and those whose nationality is unclear as a priority.
As climate change increasingly forces people to leave their homes, the question is no longer simply where they will go. It also concerns which country they legally belong to, how their identity will be established and how their rights will be protected after displacement.
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When documents are lost, nationality is at risk
Climate-related disasters can destroy not only homes, schools and government offices but also birth records and other documents establishing nationality.
When documents are lost during floods, inundation or wildfires, difficulties in obtaining replacements can make it harder for people to prove their nationality.
The risk can become even more serious when families are displaced and children cannot have their births registered. If parents disappear or die and nationality laws do not provide adequate safeguards for the transmission of nationality, children may be at risk of becoming stateless.
The report notes that among people displaced internally or across international borders because of climate change, some may already be stateless, while others may become stateless after arriving in another country because of gaps in nationality laws and procedures.
The report makes nine recommendations for governments to reduce the risk of statelessness in the context of climate change.
First, states should include stateless people and those with undetermined nationality in national censuses and other data-collection exercises. Second, they should establish legal procedures to identify stateless people displaced across borders because of climate change.
Third, stateless people exposed to climate risks should have access to disaster relief, healthcare, social protection and other forms of assistance. Fourth, governments should take effective measures to resolve existing cases of statelessness.
Fifth, states should review laws and policies that could result in people losing their nationality as a consequence of climate change. Sixth, they should prevent climate-related displacement or migration from resulting in the loss of nationality and consequent statelessness.
Seventh, all children affected by climate change should be able to acquire a nationality. Eighth, people at risk should have access to birth registration and documents establishing nationality.
The ninth recommendation calls for bilateral or multilateral arrangements facilitating cross-border movement in the context of climate change to include safeguards against loss of nationality and statelessness.
A state does not necessarily disappear when land is submerged
Another important aspect of the report is the concept of continuity of statehood in situations where rising sea levels submerge territory.
Sea-level rise poses an existential challenge, particularly for small island states. The report highlights the need to further clarify and strengthen the principle that the submergence of a country’s territory does not automatically terminate the nationality of its people.
In practical terms, even if a state loses part or a substantial portion of its territory because of rising seas, legal arrangements are needed to ensure that its citizens do not automatically become stateless. Such arrangements could become increasingly important for protecting nationality and rights as climate change threatens the territories of vulnerable states.
Nationality must become part of climate policy
The report calls for nationality and statelessness to be incorporated into policies on climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness, humanitarian assistance and climate-related displacement.
Under its Way Forward, the report emphasises the need to identify and prevent risks of loss of nationality before they materialise, rather than responding only after people have become displaced or stateless.
This will require cooperation among governments, adequate financial reed communities, according to the report. It also highlights the need for targeted international assistance and climate finance for low-income countries and small island states
The significance of the recommendations lies in their effort to treat climate change not only as an environmental or displacement crisis but also as a potential crisis of nationality and legal identity.
As climate change increasingly forces people to leave their ancestral homes, protecting them will therefore require more than finding a place for them to live. It will also require ensuring that they retain a nationality, can prove their legal identity and continue to enjoy their fundamental rights wherever climate change takes them.
See more on:
Impacts of Climate change in Nepal
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