Turkmenistan has made history by becoming the second country globally, after Kyrgyzstan, to completely eliminate statelessness. This significant achievement was announced by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Senior Protection Officer, Ms. Rano Saidumarova, during a briefing in Ashgabat.
In September 2024, President Serdar Berdimuhamedov granted citizenship to the last group of 1,146 stateless individuals. This milestone marks the full realization of Turkmenistan’s commitment to the UN’s #IBelong campaign, a ten-year initiative aimed at eradicating statelessness worldwide.
Over the past decade, Turkmenistan has successfully resolved 15,866 cases of statelessness through rigorous identification processes and citizenship grants. The authorities of the country carried out the identification of stateless persons and either granted them the citizenship of Turkmenistan or confirmed the citizenship of other States.
Turkmenistan became the first State party to the Conventions on Statelessness to resolve all known cases, as well as the first country in Central Asia to join the Global Alliance to End Statelessness.
Central Asia as a whole has witnessed a remarkable reduction in statelessness, with a sevenfold decrease over the past ten years. Since the launch of the #IBelong campaign in 2014, Central Asian states have totally resolved over 218,000 cases of statelessness. ///nCa, 7 November 2024