In Sisak, 5 March 2025
UNHCR Croatia
V.Heinzela 44/II, Zagreb
Ad Hoc Report
-Convention Passports-
Since statelessness has a very negative impact on the lives of our clients, whose cases we monitor as part of our work to combat and reduce the number of stateless persons, we have tried to assist in several cases in submitting applications for the issuance of a travel document based on the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (hereinafter: the Convention).
More precisely, these are (4) four clients, with whom we assisted in submitting applications for the issuance of a travel document based on the Convention, and which clients are stateless persons or have undetermined citizenship, which means that they are not registered in the register of citizens of any country. The basis for submitting the application is the provisions of Article 28 of the Convention and Article 9 of the Foreigners Act, which state that a travel document for stateless persons may be issued to a stateless person under the conditions set out in the Convention, if he or she has been granted temporary residence, long-term residence or permanent residence.
We emphasize that these are younger individuals, specifically X.K. (CRP 23404, 28311) – age 27; M.R. (CRP 27409) – age 32; S.B. (CRP 10912) – age 40 and D.M. (CRP 26305) – age 49, who have legal residence in the Republic of Croatia.
All requests are pending because they were recently submitted, late 2024 and beginning 2025, and accordingly we point out the different administrative practices of the police departments. Namely, the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Croatia requested an additional explanation from one client as to why he was requesting the issuance of the travel document in question, and a response was sent stating that the client intended to visit his brothers, who live in Germany, and also for the purpose of further regulating his residence in the Republic of Croatia. In the second case, the police department, based on the entry of FRY citizenship in the birth certificate, directed the client to submit a request for determining citizenship of the Republic of Serbia, pursuant to the provisions of Article 44 of the Law on Citizenship of the Republic of Serbia. It is not necessary to mention that the above-described handling of procedures is not in line with positive regulations in Croatia and that they are not applied to Croatian citizens in such or similar proceedings.
We would like to point out that through our practice, we have recorded 4 (four) clients, who were duly issued a travel document based on the Convention, however, the procedure was complicated even when submitting the application, which the competent Ministry of the Interior did not even want to receive at first. Clients themselves could not submit their requests, as, first they did not know about such passports and secondly, they could not submit it, as they would be advised not to by the police officials.
Since the Republic of Croatia has undertaken to respect the Convention as an international document, we consider such requests to be justified and legally founded, and in this spirit, we advised the aforementioned clients and provided them with assistance in submitting the relevant requests.
We hope for positive outcomes of the submitted requests, knowing that these procedures are complex and long lasting because Croatia has no SDP – statelessness determination procedure, as well as no relevant legal regulation that would be adequate for stateless persons, who are usually treated as third country citizens, which definitely they are not.
We shall inform you accordingly.
Sincerely,
Josipa Kovacevic,
CRP Sisak
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