Regional Non-Judicial Mechanisms for The Protection of The Rights of Stateless Persons
Abstract
This article examines the legal and institutional capacity of regional non-judicial mechanisms to protect stateless persons within the European, Inter-American, and African human rights systems. It focuses on procedures and institutions operating outside courts, including monitoring, individual petitions and recommendations, thematic standard-setting, periodic state reporting, fact-finding visits, technical cooperation, and institutional follow-up. Using doctrinal, comparative legal, systematic, and statistical methods, the study analyses relevant treaties, resolutions, institutional practice, and UNHCR data. It finds that the three systems differ significantly in both competence and implementation. In the European Union, nationality remains primarily within the competence of the Member States, while protection arises indirectly through asylum, migration, non-discrimination, and fundamental-rights rules, leaving no autonomous Union-wide statelessness determination regime. The Inter-American system offers the most developed non-judicial combination of individual petitions, country monitoring, thematic standards, and remedial recommendations, although uneven treaty participation and political compliance constrain its reach. In Africa, periodic reporting, thematic resolutions, and the work of the African Commission and its special mechanisms have progressively elevated the right to nationality. The 2024 Protocol on the Right to a Nationality and the Eradication of Statelessness represents a major normative advance, but its effectiveness depends on ratification and domestic implementation. The article concludes that regional non-judicial mechanisms are indispensable because they can identify structural causes of statelessness, develop common standards, facilitate cooperation, and press states to reform nationality laws without waiting for judicial litigation. Their practical impact, however, depends on clearer mandates, reliable data, accessible statelessness determination procedures, sustained monitoring, and effective follow-up to institutional recommendations.
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References
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