{"id":7255,"date":"2026-05-24T23:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T21:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/?p=7255"},"modified":"2026-05-24T23:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T21:07:08","slug":"od-osobe-bez-drzavljanstva-do-hrvatskog-drzavljanstva-nakon-30-godina-bez-pripadnosti-napokon-dobio-svoju-drzavu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/2026\/05\/od-osobe-bez-drzavljanstva-do-hrvatskog-drzavljanstva-nakon-30-godina-bez-pripadnosti-napokon-dobio-svoju-drzavu\/","title":{"rendered":"From a stateless person to Croatian citizenship: after 30 years without citizenship, he finally got his country!!"},"content":{"rendered":"After years of legal uncertainty, administrative obstacles and life without personal documents, our client <strong>D.M. \/PGP 26 305\/<\/strong> has finally had his status resolved in the Republic of Croatia through admission to Croatian citizenship. This successfully concludes one of the most complex cases in the field of protecting stateless persons in the Republic of Croatia.<\/p>\n<p>This case demonstrates just how long and exhausting the journey can be for a person who has lived &#8220;between systems&#8221; for years \u2013 without clear citizenship status, without valid identification documents and without the possibility of normal integration into society.<\/p>\n<p>The client first approached PGP Sisak (eng. Civil Rights Project Sisak) in 2021, stating that he had been living in Croatia for years without regulated status, having been born in the Republic of Croatia. He claimed he was incorrectly listed as a citizen of the Republic of Serbia, although, according to his statements, he had neither recognized citizenship nor valid documents of that country.<\/p>\n<p>For years, he lived in extremely difficult circumstances \u2013 without personal documents, without registered residence, and working unregistered in order to survive. He repeatedly tried to regulate his status, but without success. Due to lack of documents, he could not exercise his basic rights or travel freely.<\/p>\n<p>The client was born in Dubrovnik and left Croatia in the early 1990s, going to Serbia. In Croatian records, he was registered with republican citizenship of the Republic of Serbia through his father. At the same time, however, he possessed confirmation from competent authorities of the Republic of Serbia that he was not registered in the citizenship registry of that country, and was therefore not a citizen of Serbia.<\/p>\n<p>This case raised numerous legal issues related to permanent residence, stateless person status, and the possibility of acquiring Croatian citizenship.<\/p>\n<p>The client had previously been granted temporary residence for humanitarian reasons, and later permanent residence, which was approved in 2010. However, due to distrust of institutions and feeling discriminated, he was reluctant for a long time to accept the possibility of regulating his status through existing administrative procedures.<\/p>\n<p>During 2024 and 2025, PGP Sisak intensified communication with competent authorities and provided legal assistance in several parallel proceedings:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>application for acquiring Croatian citizenship by naturalization, submitted in October 2024,<\/li>\n<li>application for issuing a Convention travel document for stateless persons &#8211; submitted in February 2025, with multiple follow-up requests sent,<\/li>\n<li>administrative dispute due to administrative silence initiated in December 2025.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Indeed, one of the crucial moments in the case was the procedure concerning the months-long administrative silence in the matter of issuing the Convention travel document. After multiple follow-up requests and lack of any response from the competent authority, an administrative lawsuit was filed. The Administrative Court in Zagreb upheld the claim and ordered the Ministry of Interior to make a decision within the statutory deadline.<\/p>\n<p><u>The judgment of the Administrative Court in Zagreb Case No.: Us I-5379\/2025-6 of 29 April 2026, represents an important positive example of judicial protection of clients&#8217; rights in cases when administrative authorities fail to decide within a reasonable time.<\/u><\/p>\n<p>As already mentioned, parallel to other procedures, the client submitted an application for admission to Croatian citizenship based on long-term residence in the Republic of Croatia. After a lengthy waiting process, numerous interviews, extensive collection of documents and legal support, the client has now received an invitation to collect the Decision on admission to Croatian citizenship. This brings to an end a multi-year period of legal uncertainty and life without clearly defined status.<\/p>\n<p>This case once again demonstrates how much the stateless persons or persons with unresolved citizenship status are exposed to prolonged administrative uncertainty, social exclusion, and difficulties in exercising basic human rights.<\/p>\n<p><u><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7256\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/zastavice.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"206\" height=\"206\">Timely, adequate and continuous legal assistance provided by<\/u><u> PGP Sisak<\/u><u>, continuous communication with authorities and the use of available legal mechanisms \u2013 including administrative disputes \u2013 are often crucial for people in such situations to be able to finally realize their right to identity, documents and legal security, and to become equal members of our society.<\/u><\/p>\n<p><strong><u>This is not just a story about papers. This is the story of a man who has finally ceased to be an administrative error!!!<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Blog-DM_-bezdrzavljanstvo.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-7257\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Blog-DM_-bezdrzavljanstvo-724x1024.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"724\" height=\"1024\"><\/a>\n\n    <div class=\"xs_social_share_widget xs_share_url after_content \t\tmain_content  wslu-style-1 wslu-share-box-shaped wslu-fill-colored wslu-none wslu-share-horizontal wslu-theme-font-no wslu-main_content\">\n\n\t\t\n        <ul>\n\t\t\t        <\/ul>\n    <\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After years of legal uncertainty, administrative obstacles and life without personal documents, our client D.M. \/PGP 26 305\/ has finally had his status resolved in the Republic of Croatia through admission to Croatian citizenship. This &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7257,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[324],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7258,"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7255\/revisions\/7258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crpsisak.hr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}