Monday 19 May 2008, by Groot (de) Gerard-René In several
international instruments nationality is guaranteed as a human
right. Consequently, statelessness is already as such in breach
of the guarantee that everybody must be able to enjoy all human
rights. This paper describes international treaties which try to
assure stateless persons the widest possible exercise of
fundamental rights and freedoms, respectively try to reduce
cases of statelessness. The European Union should encourage
Member States to ratify these conventions, preferably without
reservations. The paper discusses the definition of a de
iurestateless person, i.e. a person who is not considered as a
national by any State under the operation of its law. Under this
definition, the so-called erased persons in Slovenia - i.e.
erased from the register of residents - must be classified as
stateless. The same applies for Latvian permanent residents non
citizens, be it that the latter category could also be
classified as Latvian nationals without citize