Stateless people in Australia are not officially counted or recognised by government agencies despite seeking protection and having been present in the country for decades, a new report has found.

The ‘Understanding Statelessness in Australia’ report, produced by Melbourne University’s Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, says there is a protection gap for stateless people in Australia, presenting a serious challenge to robust, transparent and principled public administration.

The report’s authors Professor Michelle Foster, Katie Robertson and Amelia Walters say there are numerous stateless people in Australia, however statelessness is not well understood, acknowledged or visible and better systems are needed to adequately identify stateless people and understand and respond to their protection needs.

The key findings of their report include that the experience of stateless people in Australia is not homogenous and often stateless people’s experience is significantly shaped by their visa category.

Stateless people experience multiple, complex and interrelated legal issues and they are not adequately protected in Australia, the report found.

It found statelessness has a profound and detrimental impact on people’s lives with many stateless people experiencing systemic exclusion in Australia.

“Australia is failing to successfully facilitate resettlement for stateless people. Australia’s inadequate protection framework for stateless people is dysfunctional and places an undue burden on support services,” the report says.

“And Australia’s legal framework for protecting and assessing stateless people is inadequate, fragmented and reactive. It requires immediate reform.

“Adequate and accessible naturalisation processes for stateless people are essential for meaningfully addressing the protection gap that exists in Australia,” the report says.

The report defines stateless people as those for whom no country in the world recognises their right to legally belong.

It involved the analysis of hundreds of tribunal and court decisions, interviews with a range of stakeholders including lawyers, health workers, policy experts, community workers, UNHCR Australia officers, government department officers and people with lived experience of statelessness.

The report made several recommendations, including that Australia should adopt a Statelessness Determination Procedure (SDP) to transparently, fairly and correctly identify stateless people and it should adopt a permanent visa category or naturalisation pathway for stateless people that includes a clear and accessible pathway to citizenship.

The report recommended Australia adopt measures to address statelessness that are informed by impacted communities, experts in the field and members of professional services working closely with impacted communities.

It also recommended the government refine data collection to more accurately identify stateless people in Australia, particularly those in immigration detention and immigration categories.

Citizenship procedures for stateless people in Australia should be simplified and streamlined including mandated timeframes for processing; and the mandatory immigration detention of stateless people, including children, should be abolished, the report says.

It also calls for the end to the removal of stateless people within Australian territory to Regional Processing Centres, including Nauru.

“The Australian government should protect everybody’s right to a nationality. Millions of people are stateless globally, leaving them vulnerable to discrimination and exclusion,” the report says,

“Without nationality many stateless people struggle to access basic human rights such as access to education and healthcare,” it says.

Read the full report: Understanding Statelessness in Australia