Statelessness is a global issue for between four and ten million people worldwide. Global conflicts and other issues deny stateless people citizenship in any country. That’s despite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes the right to a nationality.

It goes almost without saying, but everybody should have a right to a country. When you deny somebody a flag and home soil, you deny them the right to feel pride in their country. You deny them the right to put down roots and take full part in their communities. You deny them working rights and expose them to unacceptable risks through no fault of their own.

The movement to overcome statelessness also offers valuable lessons for philanthropy about centering the experiences of people with lived experience—not only in our specific field but beyond.

Learning International Lessons

Stateless advocates are gathering in Malaysia from Feb 26-29 for a global conference where more than 300 of us will share lessons learned from advocacy around the world. At United Stateless in America, we’ve had strong success over the last few years. In 2023, the U.S. government announced new guidance on statelessness for the very first time.

Ending statelessness is more than an American issue, of course. Statelessness in the U.S. and around the world is the result of a chain of worldwide issues linked to discrimination. Philanthropic organizations looking to solve the issue of statelessness should consider ways that they can encourage cross-border cooperation between groups like ours so that we can all learn from each other and build a truly global movement. They might also learn from the missteps of some well-meaning funders in the space so far.

You Can’t Invite A Stateless Person To An International Conference

As an organization in the United States, we want to beware of exceptionalism and arrogance. By its nature, the conference in Kuala Lumpur requires travel across borders. Many of our members are still unable to do that because they do not have the privilege of a passport. Even our executive director, Karina Ambartsoumian-Clough, has had to turn down invitations to conferences in places like Malaysia and Europe. Funders view her experience as the daughter of immigrants from the former USSR as very valuable in the fight against statelessness. But they tend to overlook the fact that she lacks a passport.

‘Philanthropy also isn’t really tuned in to the issue of statelessness and how it intersects with the refugee, asylum, and border problems in the U.S. and internationally. When we talk about the record numbers of people fleeing their homes, we also talk about statelessness, often, whether we use the words or not. Yet funding is siloed between these different areas.’

Nobody means badly. With a few exceptions, most people who convene these conferences have never had to wake up without a passport. The idea of it is so unfathomable that it distances them from the stateless person’s everyday reality. This level of ignorance is unintentional. It simply illustrates how statelessness exists beyond the realm of comprehension due to its absurdity.

In a nutshell, that’s the challenge facing the philanthropic sector. Funders may mean well. But how can they truly understand the reality for a stateless person? Stateless people are very unlikely to have accumulated generational philanthropic wealth. By virtue of our lived experience, we’re scrappy and resilient. We just don’t have deep pockets and it means we’re speaking from a different place.

Philanthropy also isn’t really tuned in to the issue of statelessness and how it intersects with the refugee, asylum, and border problems in the U.S. and internationally. When we talk about the record numbers of people fleeing their homes, we also talk about statelessness, often, whether we use the words or not. Yet funding is siloed between these different areas.

These innocent mistakes and omissions mean that people whose daily reality is to live the issue we are seeking to overcome are often deprived from being in the room when important conversations happen about the issue of statelessness. It is a classic catch-22 situation. You can’t invite a stateless person to an international conference. And yet, they need to be there.

The Importance of Being Stateless-Led

By being stateless-led, organizations speak in the most forceful ways for stateless interests. Too often, privileged people lead organizations with the goal of helping others. But the truth is that if you’ve got a passport, you can’t live and breathe statelessness. We have found that stateless leadership brings urgency, resilience, and creativity. Our leaders wake up thinking about statelessness and they go to bed with the same thoughts.

That makes us far more forceful advocates for change. It’s what has led to our success. It also helps with telling our stories. We are military veterans and car salesmen, Harvard graduates and Holocaust survivors. There’s no one story of statelessness. But there is one route to fixing our issues. And it starts in the urgency and power of our individual experiences.

Investing In Holistic Solutions

Funders who understand the importance of these dynamics must also invest in solving the underlying issues. That means that as well as community organizing, on statelessness, legal services have a deep impact. Legal services also draw in stateless people and help them. When we meet people, we want to be able to help; from our Stateless Relief Fund, which provides short-term stipends for people in dire circumstances, to long-term legal support. Our community trusts us to deliver the help they need. To that end, we’ve offered services to hundreds of stateless people since our start. We have produced a legal practice advisory to explain the issue to lawyers. And we have published articles in the legal press educating lawyers about the issue.

We’re eager to learn more at the global conference and thank the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion for hosting. It is exciting for us to be part of this global movement to build solidarity and action. Likewise, we offer this perspective here as a gentle challenge to global philanthropy to do more to consider how traditional funder dynamics might stand in the way, and perhaps even perpetuate some of the challenges that ending statelessness seeks to solve.

Samantha Sitterley is the staff attorney at United Stateless.

Martine Kalaw is a member, and survivor of statelessness.

Karina Ambartsoumian-Clough is the Executive Director, and is stateless.