Unfinished Nationality: The Persistent Struggle Against Statelessness in the Former Yugoslavia

• Statelessness across the former Yugoslavia stems from the 1990s dissolution of the state, with lingering issues now disproportionately impacting Romani, Ashkali, and Balkan Egyptian communities.
• Legal identity remains a significant hurdle; without birth registration, individuals cannot access basic rights like education, healthcare, and employment.
• Recent legal milestones include North Macedonia resolving its known statelessness cases in July 2025, though administrative barriers for children without registered births persist.
• EU membership does not automatically eliminate statelessness, as evidenced by ongoing challenges in Slovenia and Croatia.

Historical Roots and Current Status

• Yugoslavia's collapse into seven successor states created citizenship crises for residents who remained in locations outside their new home republic.
• Citizenship laws were often rewritten, complicating status for those who had lived in their residence for decades.
• Political discourse in countries like North Macedonia often utilizes anti-migrant disinformation, even decades after the conflicts ended.

Institutional Failures and Systemic Discrimination

• The European Network on Statelessness’s "Statelessness Index" highlights a lack of dedicated determination procedures in most successor states.
• Administrative barriers—such as requiring identification from parents to register a child's birth—create cycles of statelessness that entrap the most vulnerable.
• In July 2025, a landmark ruling by the Skopje Court of Appeal found that North Macedonia's systemic failures regarding birth registration constituted discrimination against Roma individuals.

Regional Overview

• North Macedonia: Achieved a milestone in 2025 by resolving cases linked to the Yugoslav breakup, though 147 individuals remain stateless due to registration gaps.
• Serbia: Lacks a dedicated statelessness determination procedure, making it difficult to satisfy documentation requirements.
• Kosovo: Possesses legal safeguards, but Romani, Ashkali, and Egyptian communities face deep-seated stigmas and practical barriers.
• Bosnia and Herzegovina: Achieved progress, significantly reducing the number of undocumented Roma persons, but gaps persist for children of undocumented parents.
• Montenegro: Introduced a statelessness determination procedure in 2018, yet implementation remains inconsistent with many at-risk individuals remaining uncounted.
• Slovenia and Croatia: Both EU members lack comprehensive dedicated procedures, with Slovenia still dealing with the legacy of the "erased ones" and Croatia reporting hundreds of stateless persons in census data.