Statelessness in Central Asian republics historically stems from the dissolution of the former Soviet Union in 1991, of which they all were a constituent part. Even though these republics had adopted inclusive and gender-neutral citizenship laws in the post-Soviet period, such laws failed to stipulate legal safeguards against hidden statelessness dimensions in the specific regional context of state succession. These laws, coupled with a conflict between formal law and indigenous practices, restoration of traditionalist societal tendencies, and bureaucratic administrative and technical procedures, created numerous stateless persons of undetermined citizenship, including across the border areas. As in many other parts of the world where statelessness exists, in Central Asia, it mostly affected the rights of women and children. Whereas recent policies of each republic positively address the statelessness problem within their own jurisdiction, such individual initiatives do not offer a long-term solution in a wider regional perspective. For state and non-state actors to be more successful in eliminating future incidences of statelessness, they must consider multiple challenges, including the relationship between gender and statelessness, not just within each separate jurisdiction but from a wider Central Asian regional perspective.

This chapter explores denationalization, focusing on Indonesian foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs). Post-9/11 and during the Arab Spring, Western democracies tightened border control to combat terrorism, enabling the stripping of citizenship from involved individuals. Denationalization, via law or public-authority decisions, emerged as a contentious counter-terrorism tool. Indonesia, as a Muslim-majority Southeast Asian nation, partially embraced denationalization, refusing to repatriate Indonesian FTFs. This aligns with global security concerns but raises statelessness questions. The chapter examines denationalization’s legal framework, international obligations, and the blurred line between de jure and de facto statelessness. Critics argue that disproportionately applying denationalization to Muslims undermines human rights, inter-state cooperation and international justice. Refusal to repatriate Indonesian FTFs raises concerns about long-term consequences and due process. Understanding denationalization nuances is vital, considering its impact on the citizenship rights of individuals involved in terrorism.

There is a global pattern of states using subtle and insidious legal mechanisms to threaten the citizenship status of vulnerable national minorities. In India, for instance, policies of citizenship enumeration and adjudication have classified around 2 million persons into varying categories of ‘doubtful’ citizens. While the state has not formally revoked citizenship status, it has nevertheless created complex and arduous legal processes that profoundly weaken it. Using the case of India, this chapter theorizes the antecedents, operation, and character of this form of precarious citizenship. It draws from the tradition of critical citizenship studies to argue that the precarity generated by states through these insidious routes is best understood as ‘irregular citizenship’. Irregular citizens are in the condition of suspended animation marked by ambivalence, uncertainty and ambiguity of citizenship status. States may seek to justify the practices of irregularization in the language of the rule of law. But these practices are constituted by the non-application of ordinary legal norms in the contexts of racializing stigmatized minorities and exceptionalist discourses related to national security. The chapter charts these dynamics in India and shows how India’s institutions – most visibly the courts – have adopted juristic techniques that legitimize irregularization despite being at odds with due process.

This chapter explores the impact of conflict on the issue of statelessness in Asia using a case study centred on the Kuomingtang (KMT) soldiers and their descendants in northern Thailand. The case study examines the historical background of the KMT Secret Army and conducts legal and policy analysis on relevant countries including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China (RoC) and Thailand. These analyses shed light on how the group became stateless. The chapter scrutinizes the nationality laws of each country linked to the case study and the practical implementation of these laws and offers observations on the statelessness phenomenon. The case study demonstrates that violent conflicts may lead to de jure statelessness or place people at risk of statelessness due to the loss of a sense of national belonging and legal identity documents as by-products of violent conflict; that (re)gaining citizenship of a country might not be easy as relevant laws change and the operation of laws become too difficult for vulnerable groups to manage; and that the long-lasting political consequences of conflict continue to influence state practice in the case of both PRC and RoC, regardless of the group’s rights under their respective nationality laws.

Unlike many core human rights treaties, the Statelessness Conventions are among the most poorly ratified in the world. Orthodox scholarship on human rights treaties primarily focuses on post-ratification implementation and their impact on state conduct. While it is important to examine post-ratification compliance, understanding why states agree to ratify human rights treaties is as crucial. Ratification nudges states towards better human rights practices and serves as a gateway for the implementation of international norms. This chapter addresses this gap in scholarship by examining the ratification status of the Statelessness Conventions and the ratification process of the 1954 Statelessness Convention, together with key actors and their influence, by the Philippines, Southeast Asia’s first State Party to the treaty, and its subsequent accession to the 1961 Reduction of Statelessness Convention. Both rationalist and non-rationalist explanations account for ratifications. While rational explanations push states to ratify treaties, socializing liberal and constructivist-oriented explanations, for example, also drive states to commit to treaties. Multi-dimensional and multi-perspectival orientations should therefore inform how and why ratification or accession campaigns should be undertaken, and perhaps, even how treaties themselves should be designed. This analysis serves as a basis for broader theoretical reflections on persuading states to ratify human rights treaties.

This chapter explores the synergies, limitations, and challenges of addressing statelessness through human rights and development approaches, using the Hill Country Tamils of Sri Lanka as a case study. In addressing the legacy of statelessness, both the human rights and development frameworks must be drawn on and used simultaneously. However, a frameworks approach alone falls short in addressing statelessness, given the political, economic and societal factors that perpetuate discrimination. Instead, as the case of the Hill Country Tamils demonstrates, both human rights and development approaches must be underpinned by a deeper commitment to pursuing equality and combatting discrimination at large. Despite claims of success, the legacy of statelessness in Sri Lanka still lingers. The Hill Country Tamils are still among the ‘furthest behind’ in Sri Lanka and continue to experience severe discrimination well after securing formal citizenship. The community’s prolonged statelessness has led to long-term deterioration in human rights conditions, such that a grant of formal citizenship alone is inadequate to address structural drivers of disadvantage that the community continues to endure.

The classification of natural spaces and cultural practices as ‘heritage’ profoundly alters their form and function. Individuals and communities responsible for maintaining the space or practice are often subjected to the dictates of governments, non-governmental institutions and tourists’ tastes, whilst the symbols of heritage themselves are projected as emblematic of how the state wishes itself to be perceived. The condition of statelessness magnifies the vulnerability of communities to these processes of heritagization, with the state co-opting cultural attributes into icons of heritage without any prospect of redress and exacerbating the invisibility and relative lack of agency that characterize many stateless communities. This chapter explores these issues in the context of mobile maritime communities that are stateless or at risk of statelessness in Southeast Asia. It demonstrates how states such as Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar have introduced restrictions on everyday livelihood practices through the imposition of marine protected areas and transformed other aspects of these communities’ lives, such as their houseboats, into objects of touristic consumption under the aegis of natural, cultural and intangible ‘heritage’ that serve to benefit the state yet further degrade the human rights of individuals in the affected communities.

Despite an international legal and normative framework and other global efforts to prevent childhood statelessness, an estimated 70,000 stateless children are born each year in the countries that are home to the twenty largest populations of stateless persons. Children continue to be born stateless, largely due to the inheritance of statelessness from one generation to another. In Southeast Asia, the various causes of statelessness revolve around discriminatory nationality laws premised on race, ethnicity, gender, religion and many other grounds. This chapter examines the different forms of discrimination that engender and perpetuate childhood statelessness in this subregion. It argues that many hereditary and protracted cases of statelessness experienced by children result from direct and indirect discriminatory laws, policies and practices. Case studies from Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia are discussed to illustrate the dynamics of discrimination that arbitrarily deprive children of their right to a nationality. In addition, the chapter draws on the perspectives of the applicable international norms and their limitations, as well as presents some insights into potential solutions for countering this phenomenon.

The lack of citizenship or statelessness may be brought about by action, misaction and inaction of not only the state but the society in the country as well. The state and society often join hands in depriving a community of citizenship and, in so doing, both parties may act legally and extra-legally against recognizing and giving identity documentation to the community in question, again according to the text of the law, its implementation, or both. The society in question may opt to return citizenship to the same community and encourage the state or state-like entities to implement it. This chapter discusses the situation of the Rohingyas during the political transition in Myanmar (from 2011 to 2020) when the state and society joined hands in legally, extralegally, and/or socially depriving the Rohingyas of citizenship and identity documentation and arbitrarily implementing and mis-implementing the Myanmar Citizenship Law. The main part of the chapter traces the Rohingya moment during the Myanmar Spring (February 2021) and discusses four positive developments in the situation of the Rohingyas after the February 1, 2021 coup, concluding with a caution and some suggestions for the way ahead.

This chapter focuses on the role of nationality laws in relation to marriage migration to South Korea (‘the Republic of Korea’ or ‘Korea’) and Taiwan (‘the Republic of China’) in manufacturing gendered nationality and statelessness. It illustrates how gender-based statelessness serves the interests of the ‘nation-state’ by excluding some female marriage migrants from membership of the nation. This is because nationality laws confer a status on those marriage migrants who advance the project of nation building by reversing falling birth rates. It argues that discriminatory nationality laws in Korea and Taiwan reflect traditional East Asian framings of nationality based on cultural and ethnic patriarchal lineage. The chapter demonstrates how laws and policies on nationality, in both Korea and Taiwan, both include and exclude the marriage migrant on the basis of gender, nationality, race, class, culture and ethnicity; it thereby exposes the causes of statelessness in the context of marriage migration. The chapter applies a construction of gender as based on power relations involving the state, social structures and individuals in the context of nationality laws in Korea and Taiwan.