COMMENT According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), a stateless child is defined as ‘an individual who is not considered as a national by any state”.

At its website , UNHCR further elaborates: ‘Statelessness occurs for a variety of reasons, including discrimination against minority groups in nationality legislation, failure to include all residents in the body of citizens when a state becomes independent (state succession) and conflicts of laws between states.”

In 1954, the United Nations adopted the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, yet today it estimates there are at least 10 million stateless people worldwide...