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This article by Alina Mikhalkina was originally published by NewsMaker on September 28, 2024. An edited and translated version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content partnership agreement.

Crises shaking the countries of the former Soviet Union are leading to a growing number of people losing their citizenship. While it may seem that everyone has a nationality, as they reside within the borders of some state, the reality is different. By the end of 2023, there were 4.4 million stateless individuals globally — people without citizenship or with undetermined nationality. These individuals face significant challenges, such as difficulties in getting married, opening bank accounts, or registering property. They effectively vanish from official “radars” and are stripped of many fundamental rights.

Without a passport in Moldova

According to the UN, in 2014, more than twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, over 600,000 people across the post-Soviet space still remained stateless. One of them was Elena Dergunov, a resident of Chișinău.

“In the Transnistrian region, I got a passport of the Republic of Moldova. With it, I was able to go to Israel, where I worked for several years. But when I returned to Moldova, my document was confiscated at the border; they said the passport was invalid,” the woman recalls.

In 1954, the UN countries developed the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. According to the document, a stateless person is someone who “is not considered a national by any state under the operation of its law.” By 2024, 98 countries, including Moldova, had signed the convention.

Dergunov says:

I lived without documents for 12 years. All I had was a copy of that invalid Moldovan passport. I registered my middle son at the hospital using that copy. I was only able to obtain a birth certificate for my youngest son when he was five and a half years old.

When there is no protection

Being stateless often means that you cannot open a bank account, register property, get married, enroll a child in school, find a job, or even see a family doctor. Elena admits that her ex-husband constantly threatened her, saying that “he would file a report, and the children would be taken away from me.” For all these years, she couldn’t officially get a job or receive any welfare benefits.

According to UN experts, a person can become stateless due to various circumstances, such as discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, or membership in other minority groups. Another important cause of statelessness is gender discrimination.

Additionally, statelessness can arise during “state succession,” when a new country is formed, or an old one dissolves.

“Since 2005, I applied to various institutions, but I was refused everywhere. I wasn’t a citizen of Ukraine, nor of Moldova. Later, I obtained stateless status and now have an identity card and a foreign passport. For the first time, I was able to officially get a job,” Elena says.

According to Oleg Paliy, head of the Legal Center of Advocates, the difference between recognized stateless people and those with an undefined legal status is that the latter are almost invisible to state structures: “A person without documents has no social rights because these people practically don’t exist — they are invisible to government institutions.”

Belarusians without rights

On January 5, 2023, Alyaksandr Lukashenka signed a law allowing the revocation of Belarusian citizenship for those who fled the country for political reasons. The official basis for this measure is the “loss of legal ties with the state.” Earlier, in 2022, Lukashenka's regime introduced a repressive mechanism enabling the prosecution of opposition figures in absentia. This so-called “special proceeding” not only provides authorities with a formal justification for revoking citizenship but also allows them to freely seize the property left behind by these stateless individuals.

The United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus, created by opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, has promised to launch an unprecedented initiative — a passport for the New Belarus. However, for now, the number of stateless Belarusians, who have found themselves in foreign countries by force of circumstances, continues to grow.