Mr. Khalid Hussain, Council of Minorities, contributed to the discussion with his own example of successfully combating statelessness. Formerly a stateless minority himself, he described stateless people being socially, culturally and economically subject to marginalization and exclusion, and further elaborated on the difficulties faced by stateless minorities who are without citizenship, without having access to state-guaranteed rights and basic services that include housing, water and sanitation, education, jobs and other livelihoods. Khalid Hussain described his own experience of addressing the issue of statelessness affecting Bihari community in Bangladesh and stated that together with other stateless people he managed to obtain citizenship by addressing the High Court in Bangladesh to regain their citizenship rights and later started a community based paralegal project assisting stateless minority community in his country to achieve civil documentations like birth certificate, national identity card, passport and others citizenship documents. He mentioned that stateless people face difficulties in complying with administrative requirements for such documentation. Khalid Hussain mentioned that often even after obtaining identity documentation stateless minorities continue living without having a change in their socio-economic status due to deep-rooted discrimination and marginalization. Khalid Hussein stressed the importance of reviewing citizenship laws in order to eliminate or amend provisions that may put people at risk of statelessness. The importance of issuance of passports, birth certificates, and other identity documentation to statless minorities on an equal basis and without administrative burdens was further emphasized. He also stressed that forced evictions of stateless communities should stop and they should be provided rehabilitation in dignity. Ms. Elizabete Krivcova, Latvian Non-Citizen’s Congress, mentioned that each case of statelessness has a different cause, but consequences are always the same, which is exclusion, stigmatization and violation of human rights. She contributed to the discussion through demonstrating the example of Latvian non-citizens, mostly belonging to Russian linguistic minority, who despite having access to many human rights, still face many restrictions on their minority rights, especially in the field of education and language, as well as persecution of activists defending these rights. She reiterated that statelessness is a violation of human rights and emphasized the need to stop it together with some substitute statuses between citizenship and statelessness. Elizabete Krivcova referred to the definition of the "stateless person" enshrined in the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and recommended its application in statelessness determination. She highlighted the importance of improving administrative procedures of registering new-born children. Elizabete Krivcova attached high importance to naturalization procedure and emphasized the need for the procedure to be fair and effective, designed in an inclusive manner.She referred to situations when people lost their citizenship because of state succession, secession or change of borders and when in those situations one group living in the country is granted a nationality, while another one may face arbitrary requirements, such as proof of loyalty, incomes, uniterrupted residence or a language exam. She attached great importance to implementation practice and administrative procedure, and suggested, as an example of eliminating arbitrary practices, to replace langauge exam with language courses as a step forward between majority and minority communities. She reemphasized that only fair naturalization procedures will be an effective means to combat statelessness. 9