This talk by Mary Strode is about the extremely important and increasingly topical issue of statelessness. The stateless are all around us, and largely invisible. Many of the stateless know their status only too well, but are reluctant to advertise it. Others are unaware of their status until they try to access their basic rights. Most are untouched by censuses, household surveys and regular administrative data collection. But they all have rights, and governments have responsibilities, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are trying to improve a very poor situation. In March, the UN Statistical Commission considered proposals regarding statelessness statistics from UNHCR and we shall also be able to hear from her what the outcome of that meeting was.
This talk by Mary Strode is about the extremely important and increasingly topical issue of statelessness. The stateless are all around us, and largely invisible. Many of the stateless know their status only too well, but are reluctant to advertise it. Others are unaware of their status until they try to access their basic rights. Most are untouched by censuses, household surveys and regular administrative data collection. But they all have rights, and governments have responsibilities, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are trying to improve a very poor situation. In March, the UN Statistical Commission considered proposals regarding statelessness statistics from UNHCR and we shall also be able to hear from her what the outcome of that meeting was.
Mary Strode is a survey statistician by background with extensive experience of living conditions and household surveys in developing countries, working for DFID, OECD and Oxford Policy Management in countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, Liberia, Barbados and the Gambia.
Between 2016 and 2021 Mary worked for UNHCR as the senior consultant to the Expert Group on Refugee, Internally Displaced Persons and Statelessness Statistics (EGRISS) by providing professional and drafting support for a series of international recommendations on displacement statistics and on statelessness. The International Recommendations on Refugee Statistics (IRRS) was approved by the 49
th Session of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) in March 2018 and a presentation made to the RSS Conference in Belfast in 2019. She subsequently supported the development of the International Recommendations on IDP Statistics (IRIS) together with the draft Compilers Manual for IDP and refugee statistics. These were both approved by the 51
st Session of UNSC in 2020. In 2021 she developed the initial draft of the International Recommendations on Statelessness Statistics (IROSS) in collaboration with an expert sub-group comprising statelessness experts from national statistical offices, regional and international agencies. The consideration of full IROSS by the Commission has been delayed until March 2023 by the pandemic. In the meantime, the “
Report of the Expert Group on Refugee, Internally Displaced Persons and Statelessness Statistics on statelessness statistics” (E/CN.3/2022/10) was presented to the March 2022 UNSC for feedback and guidance by the Commission.