UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR Recommendations on the Relevant Aspects of the Protection of Statelessness Persons in Italy, October 2014

With a stateless population of about 15,000 people, mostly of Roma origin descending from persons coming from ex-Yugoslavia, Italy is one of the fourteen countries in the world to have established procedures for the recognition of stateless status, by which it descends access to a series of rights in accordance with the Convention relating to the status of stateless persons. In this context, the UNHCR recommends Italy to engage in drafting an organic Law regulating every aspect of statelessness, with a special emphasis on the improvement of the status recognition procedures; highlights the need to protect undocumented stateless persons, in order to prevent them from being subject to unfair expulsions or administrative detention; invites to adopt measures aiming at preventing statelessness and guarantee the correct application of the law regulating the acquisition of Italian citizenship at birth to otherwise stateless children.