Being part of a nation is something most of us never question. Yet the top 10 people featured here have spent their lives without any country to call home, navigating a world that assumes everyone holds a passport. Statelessness robs them of travel documents, social services, and even the simple right to a legal identity.
Why These Top 10 People Matter
The ten individuals below illustrate the many ways a person can end up without citizenship—whether by bureaucratic mishap, political exile, or a deliberate renunciation. Their stories shed light on a hidden human‑rights issue that affects millions worldwide.
10 Vasily Babina
Vasily Babina, now 58, only discovered in February 2017 that he was still technically a citizen of the Soviet Union—26 years after the superpower dissolved into a dozen independent states. His lingering Soviet status was never intentional; he was behind bars when the USSR fell apart. At the time, he was serving a sentence for robbery, burglary and murder, and the authorities had no intention of freeing him.
The prison where he served his term eventually came under Russian jurisdiction, and Russia abolished the death penalty six years after the Soviet breakup. Instead of execution, Babina’s sentence was converted to 26 years of imprisonment, and he finally walked out of the cell in February 2017. That moment was the harsh awakening that he was now stateless, because the country that had issued his documents no longer existed.
A Russian court acted swiftly, labeling him an illegal immigrant and ordering his placement in a migration detention centre. Russian officials have shown little interest in keeping him, preferring instead to push him toward Kazakhstan—his birthplace—despite his family residing in Altai, Russia.
9 Mike Gogulski
In 2008, Mike Gogulski marched into the U.S. embassy in Slovakia and formally renounced his American citizenship. He then set fire to his U.S. passport, effectively erasing any proof of nationality. Gogulski is widely believed to be the only living person who has deliberately rendered himself stateless.
His motivation stemmed from deep dissatisfaction with the way the United States is governed. He argued that no one ever asked him if he wanted to be an American citizen in the first place, so he chose to opt out entirely.
Without a passport, Gogulski cannot travel beyond the European Union. He also cannot obtain another passport because he lacks a country to issue one. Instead, Slovakia provided him with a stateless person document that functions as his de‑facto ID, while his EU residency card doubles as a driver’s licence.
8 Mehran Karimi Nasseri
Mehran Karimi Nasseri was originally an Iranian national. In the 1970s, after he openly opposed the Shah, Iran stripped him of his citizenship and expelled him. Seeking refuge, he applied for asylum in several countries before Belgium finally granted him refugee status.
Under European Union law, his refugee status entitled him to settle in any member state of his choosing. He opted for the United Kingdom, but British officials denied him entry and sent him to France after he misplaced the briefcase that contained his identity papers.
The French authorities found themselves in a legal bind: they could not admit him because he lacked documentation, yet they could not deport him because there was no nation to send him back to. Imprisonment was also off the table, as he had entered France legally.
Faced with no viable alternative, French officials left Nasseri to linger in the departure lounge of Charles de Gaulle Airport. He remained there, living among the terminal’s benches and vending machines, from 1988 until 2006.
Efforts were made to secure fresh refugee paperwork from Belgium, which would have cleared his way into France. However, Belgian law required that he physically appear in the country to obtain the documents, and the same law barred any refugee who voluntarily left from returning.
In 1995, Belgium amended its regulations, allowing Nasseri to re‑enter on the condition that a social worker supervise his stay. He refused this oversight, insisting on the UK as his only acceptable destination. Consequently, he stayed put in the airport until deteriorating health forced a French hospital admission in 2006. By 2008, he finally received legal permission to reside in Paris.
7 Sonia Camilise
In 2008, Sonia Camilise suddenly discovered she was stateless after the Dominican Republic—where she had always believed she was a citizen—refused to grant her citizenship. The denial stemmed from her inability to produce documentation proving her Haitian father’s legal residency in the Dominican Republic at the time of her birth.
Haiti also rejected her claim, insisting she was already a Dominican citizen. Haitian law at the time prohibited dual nationality, leaving her in limbo.
Camilise had spent her entire life in the Dominican Republic, never having set foot in Haiti. Her mother, also born there, could not help. Without recognized citizenship, she could not pursue higher education, get married, or obtain a passport to leave the country. The lack of a passport meant she could not even apply for one, trapping her in a bureaucratic dead‑end.
6 Eliana Rubashkyn
Born in Colombia, Eliana Rubashkyn was originally known as Luis Rubashkyn. After realizing she was intersex—possessing both male and female chromosomes—she underwent hormone therapy that suppressed male hormones and activated female ones, resulting in breast development and a female presentation.
While studying at Taipei University in Taiwan, officials asked her to update her passport. She travelled to the Colombian consulate in Hong Kong, as Colombia lacked a diplomatic mission in Taiwan. Hong Kong airport officials initially barred her entry, citing the gender listed on her Colombian passport as “he.” After a protracted negotiation, they allowed her in, but without her passport, leaving her stranded for months in the city’s streets and even a shipping container.
The United Nations eventually granted her “gender refugee” status, but this designation stripped her of Colombian citizenship. Many nations also turned her down because they required full sex‑reassignment surgery—rather than just hormonal treatment—to qualify for refugee protection. In 2014, New Zealand finally offered her asylum, yet she remains stateless there, only becoming eligible for citizenship after five years of residence.
5 Muhammad Idrees
Muhammad Idrees became an unfortunate casualty of the fraught India‑Pakistan relationship. He spent a decade in an Indian prison after overstaying his visa by a mere three days. Born in India, he later migrated to Pakistan following his marriage, acquiring Pakistani citizenship.
In 1999, he travelled back to India to see his ailing father. The father died shortly after his arrival, and Idrees inadvertently exceeded his visa by three days. When he requested an extension, Indian authorities swiftly detained him, suspecting him of being a Pakistani spy.
He was sentenced to ten years in prison and fined a paltry $9.17 for the visa violation. Upon release, he attempted to return to Pakistan, only to be turned away because Pakistani officials no longer recognized him as a citizen. They claimed he had been disowned by his family after separating from his wife. Moreover, his Pakistani passport had expired back in 2003, rendering it useless. Consequently, Idrees found himself stuck in India, without a nation to call his own.
4 Eun‑ju
Eun‑ju’s citizenship status remains a mystery, as neither North Korea nor China acknowledges her as a national. Her mother and grandmother, Park Hyeon‑sun, were North Korean refugees who fled to China. There, her mother married a Korean‑Chinese man. In 2006, her mother vanished while attempting to migrate from China to South Korea, and her father died in a 2007 accident.
After these tragedies, Eun‑ju and her grandmother stayed in China until 2012. Park eventually secured asylum in South Korea by traveling through Laos and Thailand, motivated by a daughter’s cancer diagnosis. While Park received South Korean citizenship, Eun‑ju was left behind.
Park petitioned South Korean authorities to grant Eun‑ju citizenship, but Korean law prohibits issuing citizenship to individuals without a living parent, even if a grandparent is alive. As a result, Eun‑ju cannot enroll in a regular school, open a bank account, or receive medical care. She does attend an alternative school, yet she remains barred from taking any official qualification exams.
3 Sze Chung Cheung
Sze Chung Cheung, the son of a Belgian mother and a Hong Kong father, finds himself without citizenship from either nation. Born in Hong Kong, he initially held Belgian citizenship, which he later lost because Belgian law requires citizens born abroad to either reside in Belgium between ages 18‑28 or formally declare their intent to retain Belgian nationality before turning 28. Cheung missed both requirements.
He is not the first Belgian born overseas to lose citizenship. In 2006, twins Marc and Louis Ryckmans, also born in Hong Kong, faced the same fate. Their father was a Belgian‑Australian, and their mother was Chinese. The twins were denied citizenship by Belgium, Australia, and Hong Kong. Australia initially classified them as Chinese due to their birthplace, then switched to British because Hong Kong was still a British colony at their birth. The twins eventually regained Belgian citizenship after a court intervened in 2013.
Cheung’s situation mirrors these precedents, leaving him stateless and navigating a complex web of nationality laws without a clear path to citizenship.
2 Frederick Ngubane
Frederick Ngubane’s story is a poignant example of accidental statelessness. He claims South African nationality, but South African officials dispute his status. He asserts that both of his parents were South African, yet he lost his birth certificate—the primary proof of citizenship—when a taxi he was traveling in was hijacked.
Ngubane’s early life saw him leave South Africa at age three with his mother for Kenya after his father’s death. His mother was tragically murdered in 2002, after which he followed a friend from Kenya to Uganda. When that friend died in 2008, Ngubane decided to return to South Africa in 2009.
He approached the South African consulate in Kenya, requesting a visa, but was told to apply directly at Home Affairs in South Africa. Upon arrival, he was admitted using his birth certificate, only to lose it during the same hijacking incident. Without the certificate, South African authorities refused to issue a visa, and they declined to help him obtain a duplicate. Moreover, Kenyan, Ugandan, and Tanzanian consulates denied any record of his schooling, leaving him without residency permits or any recognized nationality.
1 Maha Mamo
Maha Mamo was born in Lebanon to Syrian parents, yet she and her two siblings are stateless. Lebanese law requires that a child’s father be Lebanese for the child to acquire Lebanese citizenship, a condition her father did not meet. Simultaneously, Syrian law refused to recognize her because her parents’ inter‑faith marriage—Christian father and Muslim mother—was not officially acknowledged by the Syrian government.
The absence of citizenship imposed severe restrictions: the siblings could not work, travel, or even purchase a SIM card. Their fortunes turned in 2014 when the Brazilian embassy in Lebanon granted them humanitarian visas and travel documents, providing a lifeline.
Nevertheless, they faced a new obstacle: they had no contacts in Brazil. A compassionate Brazilian family, introduced by a mutual friend, agreed to host Maha and her siblings despite never having met them. Their story is one of many; Brazil has extended humanitarian visas to over 8,000 Syrian refugees since 2013, offering a rare beacon of hope for stateless families.