Photo Credit: Refugees International
11/05/2007

Kazakhstan’s unofficial policy of discouraging citizenship encourages people to go underground. The estimated number of stateless individuals varies widely. “You won’t find them. They are hiding,” one rights worker told Refugees International. “They can’t work. They can’t move. They can’t do anything,” said another. Furthermore, asylum seekers become stateless in an environment that officially recognizes only Afghan asylum seekers as refugees.