Rami Hussein is one of about four-and-a-half million people across the globe who have, or are, enduring statelessness.

Rami’s father fled Palestine during the 1948 was when Zionist forces seized territory and established the state of Israel, forcing more than 700,000 Palestinians into exile.

Rami’s parents found tenuous refuge in Iraq but were never granted citizenship. Rami grew as a second-class citizen. He was able to access a limited amount of schooling, but his family could not own a house, property or even a car.

“My father was originally from Palestine. He fled the war in 1948 and went to Iraq. Bet there was never any paperwork and he was never given Iraqi citizenship. After Israel was created, we were not Palestinians but nor were we Iraqi,” Rami said.

Rami’s family was again forced to flee war in Iraq during the Second Gulf War in 2003, finding sanctuary in neighbouring Syria.

“It was not safe for us in Iraq, so we left and went to Syria. These were difficult times. It was hard to find work and my family struggled,” he said.

For a third time Rami’s family was forced to flee conflict when civil war broke out in Syria in 2011.

The family applied to come to Australia as refugees and arrived in Melbourne in 2012. As permanent Residents, they are no longer stateless but have faced some challenges.

Rami’s multiple and profound physical and personal conditions have been barriers to him getting a job.

He struggled with language skills, poor literacy and numeracy, limited formal education and a lack of communications skills.

But after Rami was connected with migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Australia, his fortunes changed.

His AMES Employment Mentor Nour Almaz arranged employment counselling for him and supported him on a daily basis as endeavoured to hold down a job.

He now has a job in a local cheese factory and, having started a family, his future looks bright.

“Life is all good now. Life in Australia is good, and my kids can grow up safe and with futures,” Rami said.

Statelessness is an international scourge that denies millions of people a nationality and rights, privileges and protections that go with that.

Stateless people often aren’t allowed to go to school, see a doctor, get a job, open a bank account, buy a house or even get married.  
They also may have difficulty accessing basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement.

Without these things, they can face a lifetime of obstacles and disappointment.

The international legal definition of a stateless person is “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”.

Simply, this means that a stateless person does not have the nationality of any country. Some people are born stateless, but others become stateless.

Stateless people are found in all regions of the world. The majority of stateless people were born in the countries in which they have lived their entire lives.

Statelessness often has a severe and lifelong impact on those it affects. The millions of people around the world who are denied a nationality often fight for the same basic human rights that most people take for granted.

Often, they are excluded from cradle to grave— being denied a legal identity when they are born, access to education, health care, marriage and job opportunities during their lifetime and even the dignity of an official burial and a death certificate when they die.

Many people pass on statelessness to their children, who then pass it on to the next generation.

One significant cause of statelessness is discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, language or gender.

The United Nations says non-inclusion of specific groups in the body of citizens for discriminatory reasons is linked to protracted and large-scale statelessness in the country of birth. States can also deprive citizens of their nationality through changes in law using discriminatory criteria that leave whole populations stateless.

The majority of the world’s known stateless populations belong to minority groups. Gender discrimination in nationality laws is a significant cause of childhood statelessness.

The laws in 25 countries do not let women pass on their nationality on an equal basis with men. Consequently, children can be left stateless when fathers are stateless, unknown, missing or deceased.

Statelessness also can occur when people move from the countries where they were born, conflict of nationality laws can give rise to the risk of statelessness. For example, a child born in a foreign country can risk becoming stateless if that country does not permit nationality based on birth alone and if the country of origin does not allow a parent to pass on nationality to children born abroad.