Cristina Raducan Roma Women Network in Moldova Cristina.raduca8@gmail.com +373 799 799 96 Item 5: Minority women and children affected by statelessness: advancing gender equality in nationality laws. Thank you Madame Chair, According to the data provided by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, it is estimated that at least 10 million people are stateless worldwide: they are not considered as nationals by any State under the operation of its law. Statelessness is sometimes referred to as an invisible problem because stateless people often remain unseen and unheard. They often aren’t allowed to go to school, see a doctor, get a job, open a bank account, buy a house or even get married. A stateless person is not allowed to express his or her electoral rights, like the right to vote or to be elected in a constituency. This means that the stateless person has no rights and opportunities even to decide on his or her future life in the country he or she seeks to live. The fact that someone is excluded from the decision making process, without any opportunities to somehow influence the direction the country is going, contributes to the fact that the needs and voices of a big category of population are not taken into consideration during the development of normative framework. Thus, stateless people always face the violation of their fundamental human rights. Taking into account the refugees’ crisis, which occurred in the past few years due to multiple conflicts around the world, all of us have to understand that the situations when someone is denied a citizenship and risks to become stateless are even much more real. That’s why today it is crucial to discuss about this issue and to urge states to find viable solutions to combat the phenomenon.