“Solutions are urgently needed for millions without citizenship or at risk of statelessness around the world -including Myanmar’s Rohingya, and minority populations at risk of statelessness in India’s Assam,” said Filippo Grandi- the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
The statement was made on Monday by Grandi ahead of the opening of UNHCR’s annual Executive Committee meeting in Geneva.
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“Without these, we risk a deepening of the exclusion that already affects the lives of millions of people,” Grandi further said.
“This is why a redoubling of efforts has become crucially needed,” he added.
Name of around 1.9 million people was excluded from the final National Register of Citizens (NRC), which was published on August 31.
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Several lakhs Rohingyas are also facing the threat of statelessness after they fled to Bangladesh to avoid ethnic riots in Myanmar.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees further said, “As the number of countries taking action against statelessness is increasing, the international community was nearing a point of critical mass in its efforts to stamp out statelessness for good.”
“And yet the progress is far from assured: damaging forms of nationalism, and the manipulation of anti-refugee and migrant sentiment – these are powerful currents internationally that risk putting progress into reverse,” he added.
The agency on October 2 had said those left out from the final NRC are “potentially stateless”.
“Majority of those who could become stateless are Muslims,” the agency said.
“We have expressed concern that this exercise of verification of nationality may result in statelessness for some of the people,” said Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
“The Indian government has assured us that there is due process being put in place for these people to make recourse if their initial response was negative in terms of nationality,” Grandi added.