PILnet NGO partners and law firms are working together to create guidelines for Belarusian parents on obtaining documents for their newborns without having to return home at great personal risk.
The birth of a child should be the happiest time in a family’s life, but for parents from Belarus living abroad, the joy of a newborn may also come with some apprehension about the complications they’ll face obtaining documents for their child.
In order to apply for residency documents for their child in the country where they live, parents must first provide the child’s identification documents from their home country. Since 2023, Belarus has not provided these documents at embassies for their citizens living abroad, and requires parents to instead return to Belarus to get them. For people who left the country following the crackdown on civil society and independent media beginning in 2020—in which tens of thousands of civic activists, journalists, and students were arrested—returning to their country could be dangerous.
Legal Hub, an organization providing free, anonymous, and safe legal advice to people from Belarus, turned to PILnet with a request for volunteer lawyers to conduct research and create clear guidelines for how parents who were forced to leave non-democratic or authoritarian regimes can get their children documented. Without such documentation, these children face the real risk of becoming stateless, and of joining over 400,000 stateless people in Europe.
Through our Global Clearinghouse, PILnet matched Legal Hub with volunteer lawyers from DLA Piper and White & Case. It also connected Legal Hub to Apatride Network, an NGO partner led by people with lived experience of statelessness, with whom PILnet had been working on preventing statelessness for Belarusians and other populations experiencing or at risk of statelessness.
Developing resources to prevent statelessness
In less than four months the firms created reports on 19 countries. Legal Hub is now preparing those reports to be accessible to their communities and will make them available soon. Together with the Apatride Network they are expanding the project to cover more countries and to advocate for policy and practice changes in countries where significant barriers prevent children of Belarusians and other displaced populations—such as from Syria and Ukraine—from obtaining documentation.
“We hope this project will give Belarusian parents a sense of clarity and security in an otherwise overwhelming situation. No one should have to choose between their child’s legal identity and their own safety,” a representative of Legal Hub told PILnet.
“By offering country-specific guidance, we aim to empower families to navigate these legal challenges with confidence and without fear of persecution. But most importantly, we want to help prevent cases of factual statelessness among children—ensuring that every child has access to documentation, rights, and recognition from the very beginning of their life.”
In 2025, Legal Hub and Apatride Network will make history together by delivering the first briefing on statelessness to Members of the European Parliament, including a case study on children of immigrants from Belarus. This PILnet-brokered collaboration demonstrates the value of pro bono work within collective action to advance the rights of those at risk of statelessness, with pro bono efforts strengthening both legal advocacy and empowering affected communities.
About our NGO partners:
Since forming in 2021, Legal Hub has provided legal consultations for more than 22,000 people both inside Belarus and abroad on topics ranging from housing and employment disputes to administrative detentions. Their team is capable of assisting in more than 60 areas of legal specialization. They also offer a variety of online resources and tool kits for Belarusians.
The Apatride Network is a coalition of stateless individuals, communities and stateless-led organizations in the EU. Their work is comprehensive and multi-pronged, with focus on: raising awareness on statelessness through publications and guest lectures, advocacy, legal assistance, impact initiatives, and cooperating on statelessness initiatives from local to global level.