Statelessness in Central Asia: From Succession to Solutions

Draft chapter later published in: Solving Statelessness / [ed] Laura Van Waas; Melanie Khanna, Wolf Legal Publishers, 2016, p. 317-344. - Many of the protracted situations of statelessness that we face today have arisen due to State succession. In addition, State succession continues to poses a risk with regard to the creation of further large scale cases of statelessness. Therefore, there is a need to better understand how to prevent and resolve statelessness in situations of State succession. This chapter argues that if we are to effectively do so, historic, economic, political and socio-psychological factors must be considered in policy and practice to ensure that legal safeguards to prevent and reduce statelessness are not out of sync with the context within which the law is being applied. To contextualize this discussion, the chapter explores the various underexplored factors which lead to the creation of large stateless populations in Central Asian States following their succession from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. As reflected by the successful efforts of Kyrgyzstan to overcome some of the past disjuncture between the citizenship law, its implementation and the context within which it is being applied, it is claimed that the effectiveness of efforts to prevent and reduce statelessness following State succession, and pre-empt problems in the future, require States to adopt reactive and flexible policies that are sensitive to the various historic, economic, political and socio-psychological factors influencing the population. Such an approach is situated within the international law surrounding the avoidance of statelessness in cases of State succession, notably the requirement that States take all appropriate measure to avoid statelessness.