23. Legal status of statelessness person or apatris

In law, statelessness is the lack of any nationality, or the absence of a recognized link between an individual and anystate. A stateless person is someone who is "not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law".

You acquire a nationality automatically at birth or you obtain one later on in life. Those who acquire nationality at birth do so because they were born in a country that gives nationality through birth on their territory (jus soli) or because their parents were able to transmit their nationality to their children (jus sanguinis), which usually applies regardless of where the child was born. Sometimes, however, people need to apply to become a national of a country and base their application on years of residence or a family link with the given country. The international legal definition of a stateless person is set out in Article 1 of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, which defines a stateless person as "a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law". This means that a stateless person is someone who does not have a nationality of any country. Some people are born stateless, while others become stateless over the course of their lives. One major cause of statelessness is the existence of gaps in a country's legal regime relating to nationality. Every country has a law, or laws, which establish under what circumstances one acquires nationality or can have it withdrawn. If nationality laws are not carefully written and correctly applied, some people can be excluded and left stateless. An age-old example is children found in a country who are of unknown parentage (foundlings). If nationality can only be acquired based on descent from a national, these children can be left stateless. Fortunately most nationality laws avoid this and recognize them as nationals of the state in which they are found. Another factor that makes matters more complicated is that many people move from the countries where they were born. Unless a country of origin permits a parent to pass on nationality through family ties, then a child born in a foreign country risks becoming stateless if that country does not permit nationality based on birth in the territory alone. A second important reason that statelessness occurs is the emergence of new states and changes in borders. In many cases, specific groups may be left without a nationality as a result of these changes. Statelessness can also be caused by a loss or deprivation of nationality. In some countries, citizens can lose their nationality simply from having lived outside their country for too long. States can also arbitrarily deprive citizens of their nationality through changes in law that leave whole populations stateless, using discriminatory criteria like ethnicity or race to define who and who does not belong to a state. Organization that is responsible for statelessness people is UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). The 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness are key legal instruments in the protection of stateless people around the world and in the prevention and reduction of statelessness. While they are complemented by regional treaty standards and international human rights law, the two statelessness conventions are the only global conventions of their kind.

The law of the Republic of Kazakhstan says, that foreigners and statelessness people have rights and ligations of citizens if there nothing more was said by Constitution, laws and international agreements. (Иностранцы и лица без гражданства пользуются в Республике Казахстан правами и свободами, а также несут обязанности, установленные для граждан, если иное не предусмотрено Конституцией, законами и международными договорами.)