Estonia participated at the 70th session of the UNHCR ExCom meeting. Ms Ruth Annus, Director General of the Citizenship and Migration Policy Department of the Ministry of the Interior delivered the statement on Estonia`s behalf at the High Level Segment on Statelessness and General Debate.
“Digital innovative solutions could save not only time and money, but also lives. Interoperable databases, innovative identification and registration tools with reliable data protection solutions and predicting large population movements with the help of AI could contribute to avoid leaving anyone behind,” she said. Estonia is currently looking for new innovative ways of working and contributing in order to ease the situation of refugees.
Turning to the issue of statelessness she said, that the decrease of the number of persons of undetermined citizenship residing in Estonia continues to be the main objective of the Estonian naturalisation policy. At the same time we believe that citizenship cannot be forced on anyone and that everyone has the right to choose his or her citizenship. It`s important to highlight, that persons of undetermined citizenship in Estonia have permanent residence permits and enjoy full social rights, and are thus not stateless.
