Kosovo's Undocumented Roma and the Risk of Statelessness

For most people in Kosovo, a birth certificate is an ordinary piece of paper. An identity card is something kept in a wallet. Citizenship is rarely questioned.

For some Roma families, however, the absence of these documents can create serious barriers to enrolling in school, accessing healthcare, obtaining formal employment, travelling, registering a marriage and proving legal identity.

This is a less visible route towards unresolved nationality and, in some cases, statelessness. Not every undocumented person is stateless, but missing civil-registration records and evidence can prevent people who were born in Kosovo, have lived there all their lives and consider it home from proving their legal identity or nationality.

The problem is not new. In 2026, however, it gained renewed importance as Kosovo began implementing a new citizenship law and fully applying its existing legal framework on foreigners and residence.

The first final results of Kosovo's 2024 population census reported that 0.54 per cent of the resident population identified as Roma. These data should be interpreted cautiously because of limited participation in some northern municipalities and because ethnicity data alone cannot show who has unresolved nationality or civil status.

For the first time, Kosovo's census included questions about citizenship and identification documents, creating the possibility of a clearer picture of people affected by statelessness and documentation problems. The Expert Group on Refugee, Internally Displaced Persons and Statelessness Statistics (EGRISS) reported that the Kosovo Agency of Statistics planned to establish a dedicated register for displaced and stateless people in 2026, in cooperation with the Ministry for Communities and Returns, UNHCR and all municipalities. Publicly available, disaggregated data nevertheless remain limited.

According to the European Network on Statelessness country profile for Kosovo, last updated in February 2025, UNHCR reported 14 people with recognised stateless status in 2024 and estimated that about 450 people were at risk of statelessness or had undetermined nationality. The actual number may be higher because of limited data, under-reporting and low awareness among affected people and officials.

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For Roma, this matters particularly because documentation problems rarely exist in isolation.

A person who cannot obtain an identity document may first have been unable to obtain a birth certificate. Their parents may themselves have lacked documents. Their grandparents may have been registered under the former Yugoslav system, UNMIK structures or another administrative system. A family may possess evidence of residence, school records, medical records or old documents, but still lack the particular document an official procedure requires.

One missing document can therefore create another missing document.

Eventually, an administrative problem can become a nationality problem.

Under Kosovo's legal framework, births should normally be registered within 30 days. Late registration is possible, but it requires additional evidence and procedures.

For births in healthcare institutions, the process can involve medical documentation, identification documents of the parents and civil-status records. For births outside health institutions, authorities can require witness statements, vaccination or school records and other evidence establishing the circumstances of the birth.

The law provides routes for difficult cases. Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian communities are exempt from late-registration fines. Where administrative registration is impossible because sufficient evidence cannot be provided, a court procedure can be initiated, and free legal assistance is available through civil-society organisations.

On paper, these safeguards are significant. In practice, however, the most difficult cases remain difficult.

ENS and Roma Versitas Kosovo report that Roma communities continue to face barriers caused by missing documents, complex procedures, inconsistent implementation, stigma and limited awareness of their rights. In some cases, people must reconstruct their identity using evidence that is itself difficult to obtain.

This is where the difference between having rights and being able to exercise them becomes crucial.

A person may legally have the right to registration, but if they cannot prove the facts required by the procedure, the right may remain theoretical.

Kosovo has made an important legal development that is sometimes overlooked.

In 2020, it established a dedicated Statelessness Determination Procedure, or SDP. The procedure is handled centrally by the Division of Citizenship within the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Applications can be made orally or in writing. There is no application fee and no requirement that the applicant already have lawful residence in Kosovo. Applicants can receive interpretation, an interview and free legal assistance through UNHCR and civil-society organisations. The authorities can also request evidence from other countries and institutions.

The procedure is supposed to produce a decision within 180 days, although this can be extended to up to 365 days in exceptional circumstances. There is also a right to appeal.

For a person who has spent years without a nationality, this procedure can provide a route towards legal recognition. But there is a major gap. A person applying for recognition as stateless does not automatically receive a residence right or access to other rights while the case is being examined. They are considered to have a form of tolerated stay and should not be detained or expelled, but the application itself does not provide the practical security that many people need while waiting for a decision.

Once recognised as stateless, a person is entitled to a one-year temporary residence permit, renewable annually for up to five years, as well as identity documentation and access to work, education, healthcare and family reunification. Article 14 of the 2026 citizenship law allows a stateless person to apply for naturalisation after residing in Kosovo for at least five years from recognition. The Statelessness Index, last updated in February 2025, reported that no travel document had yet been issued and that limited awareness among local authorities created practical barriers.

The most important legal development of 2026 was the adoption of Law No. 10/L-023 on Citizenship of the Republic of Kosovo. The Assembly adopted the law on 23 April, it was promulgated on 4 May and it was published in the Official Gazette on 6 May 2026, repealing the 2013 citizenship law. Under Article 34, the new law entered into force 15 days after publication.

There are positive changes.

The new framework more clearly distinguishes acquisition of citizenship by descent, birth in Kosovo, adoption and naturalisation. It provides that a child is born a Kosovo citizen if at least one parent was a Kosovo citizen at the time of birth. It also permits electronic applications, establishes the Citizenship Appeals Commission in law and simplifies some procedures for reacquiring Kosovo citizenship.

For people with straightforward documentation histories, these reforms could make the system easier to navigate. But the law also introduces new questions.

One of the most significant changes concerns children born outside Kosovo to Kosovo citizens. The law generally requires the child's citizenship to be registered before the age of 18, with an exceptional possibility up to age 23 where there is a risk of statelessness. Children aged 14 to 18 must also give consent in the circumstances described in Article 6(3). Legal analysts have warned that these requirements could have unequal consequences for communities with histories of displacement and parallel administrative systems.

That concern is not limited to Roma. It also affects other communities, displaced people and members of the diaspora whose civil-status records may exist outside Kosovo's administrative system.

For Roma, however, the lesson is broader: when citizenship depends on documents, people who have historically experienced documentation gaps remain especially vulnerable to changes in the rules.

Another important development came in March, when full implementation of Kosovo's existing Law on Foreigners began.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs launched an information campaign, trained additional officials and decentralised residence-permit services. Full implementation began on 15 March 2026, and applications for residence permits or address registration could begin on 16 March.

The implementation immediately exposed how complicated documentation can become in a country where different communities have historically used different administrative systems.

On 15 March, the Ministry announced a three-month process for registering births, marriages and deaths recorded before that date by Serbian-run parallel structures, and temporary recognition of Serbian-issued identity cards for identification purposes. Applications using specified Serbian-issued documents were reported to have opened on 23 March.

The episode demonstrated something that is highly relevant to the Roma community: documentation is not simply an administrative issue. In Kosovo, it can intersect with displacement, citizenship, political identity, residence, ethnicity and the legacy of the conflict.

People caught between administrative systems can be left with evidence of their life but without a document recognized by the institution they need to approach.

It is important not to describe every undocumented Roma person as stateless. There are several different situations. Some people are citizens of Kosovo but lack an identity card. Some have a birth certificate but cannot prove citizenship. Some have an unresolved nationality. Some may be citizens of another country but cannot prove it. Others may genuinely be stateless. And some people may not even know which category they fall into. This distinction is crucial because the legal solution is different in each case. A person who is already a Kosovo citizen needs documentation. A person whose birth has never been registered may first need late birth registration. A person who has a nationality elsewhere may need to establish that nationality or regulate their residence. A genuinely stateless person may need access to the Statelessness Determination Procedure. Treating all of these cases as simply "people without documents" can lead to the wrong solution.

The connection between Roma and statelessness in the Western Balkans has deep historical roots. The breakup of Yugoslavia, displacement, changes in borders, the Kosovo conflict and the creation of new administrative systems left some families with incomplete or contradictory records.

Poverty can make the problem worse.

A family living on a very limited income may not be able to travel repeatedly to a municipal office, obtain documents from another country, pay for translations or legalize old records. A person who has never possessed an identity document may also find it difficult to prove the identity of their parents.

The result can be an administrative cycle:

The Council of Europe and OSCE have repeatedly highlighted the relationship between documentation and access to basic rights. In June 2026, the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights published a new compendium on Roma and Sinti documentation, describing legal identity as a fundamental human right and a prerequisite for accessing education, healthcare, social support, employment and political participation.

For a Roma child, therefore, a missing document can become an education problem.

For an adult, it can become an employment problem.

For an older person, it can become a social-protection problem.

And for an entire family, it can become an intergenerational problem.

Kosovo is not starting from zero.

Kosovo has commitments under the Poznań Declaration and a Strategy for the Advancement of the Rights of Roma and Ashkali Communities for 2022-2026, implemented through a 2025-2026 Action Plan. A 2025 ENS and Roma Versitas Kosovo policy paper reported that the promised institutional mechanism for identifying, preventing and reducing statelessness had not yet been established. Much of the practical work continued to be led by civil-society organisations and international partners rather than a comprehensive government programme.

This is one of the central weaknesses of the current system.

NGOs can find people.

They can accompany families to municipal offices.

They can provide legal assistance.

They can reconstruct family histories.

They can help obtain documents from neighbouring countries.

But civil registration and nationality are ultimately state responsibilities.

A person should not need an NGO to prove that they exist.

The wider political environment affects whether legal reforms are implemented consistently.

Between February 2025 and June 2026, Kosovo held three parliamentary elections. The EU described the elections as peaceful, competitive and well administered, but the repeated votes reflected prolonged institutional deadlock and delayed effective governance.

In June 2026, the European Parliament linked progress on Kosovo's European path to sustained reforms in the rule of law, fundamental rights and the fight against corruption.

For Roma communities, European integration is not an abstract foreign-policy question.

EU standards increasingly reach into the everyday relationship between citizens and institutions: equal treatment, access to justice, non-discrimination, civil registration, freedom of movement and social inclusion.

The test of those standards is often found not in a government strategy, but in a municipal office.

Can an undocumented Roma mother register her child?

Can an adult who has never possessed an ID obtain one?

Can someone whose parents were never registered establish their nationality?

Can a person who is genuinely stateless receive legal status without spending years trapped between institutions?

These are the questions that determine whether legal reform reaches the people it is supposed to protect.

Kosovo has an opportunity in 2026 to move from individual solutions to a systematic approach.

First, the authorities should use the 2024 census and follow-up administrative work to publish and analyse reliable, disaggregated data on people with unresolved nationality, documentation gaps and statelessness, while protecting personal data.

Second, the planned register of displaced and stateless people should become operational and should include municipalities and civil-society organisations with direct knowledge of affected communities.

Third, Kosovo should establish a permanent mechanism for identifying and preventing statelessness, rather than relying primarily on projects and short-term interventions.

Fourth, municipal civil-status officials need regular training on late birth registration, nationality and statelessness, particularly for complex cases involving Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian families.

Fifth, the authorities should accompany the new citizenship law with clear secondary legislation and practical guidance. Article 32 gives the responsible minister one year from the law's entry into force to issue the necessary bylaws. Independent legal analysis has warned that unresolved evidentiary and procedural issues may create uncertainty for displaced people, diaspora members and non-majority communities.

Finally, Kosovo should ensure that a person trying to resolve their legal identity is not penalised for having been undocumented in the first place.

There is an irony at the heart of Kosovo's statelessness problem.

The country has built an increasingly sophisticated legal framework for citizenship and civil registration. It has a dedicated statelessness procedure. It has international partners, trained officials and civil-society organisations working on the issue.

Yet people can still fall through the gaps.

For Roma families, the problem is often not that the law says they have no rights.

It is that exercising those rights requires evidence they have never been able to obtain.

That distinction is important.

Statelessness means that no state considers a person its citizen under its law. Documentation often determines whether that legal relationship can be recognised and exercised in practice.

Kosovo has spent years building that bridge.

In 2026, the challenge is to ensure that this framework reaches everyone, including families who have lived with documentation gaps for generations.