For almost her entire life, Asma Nayim Ullah was a citizen of nowhere.
The 23-year-old was one of about 8,000 people living in Australia without holding nationality from any country.
"I don't see myself as stateless because I know where I belong,"
Asma said.
"I know where I am from, but I'm not accepted there."
Asma is Rohingya, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority group who represent the largest stateless population in the world due to being denied citizenship by Myanmar's military regime since 1982.
Persecution of Rohingya has intensified in the past decade, with security forces accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes, leading to the displacement of some 1.2 million people.
A burned house in Gawdu Zara village, in Mynmar's Rakhine state, where the vast majority of the country's Rohingya lived. (AP)
Asma grew up without official identity documents and thus had limited access to education and healthcare, faced arbitrary detention and was limited to where she could travel.
"My parents couldn't really move from one place to another, you have to ask for permission," she said.
The family fled Myanmar in 2013, with Asma's parents and three siblings smuggled through Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, before being intercepted by Australian border authorities on a wooden boat with more than 100 other people in the Timor Sea.
Her family were detained in an onshore detention facility in Darwin, before having their asylum claims assessed and being resettled in Sydney.
Asma was 10 years old and her mother, Sajeda, was 26.
Darwin's Wickham Point Detention Centre ceased operations in 2016. (Supplied: Dept of Immigration and Border Protection)
Citizenship isn't just a passport
As a signatory to both major international statelessness treaties, Australia is expected to report the number of stateless people in its territory annually to the United Nations refugee agency.
Most stateless people living in Australia arrived seeking asylum more than a decade ago, according to research by Melbourne Law School's Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness.
In the 1960s, the United Nations moved to protect people who lacked a recognised nationality and prevent the creation of new stateless cases. (Supplied: United Nations)
The centre's associate director Katie Robertson said while the federal government reported 8,183 stateless people living in Australia in 2025, the number could not be considered reliable.
"We know that there are thousands of stateless people in Australia,"
she said.
"But we also know that those numbers can't be considered as comprehensive and accurate because we don't have a mechanism for correctly working out who actually is stateless."
Australia does not have a uniform, legislated definition of statelessness or a formal mechanism for identifying stateless people.
University of Melbourne academic Katie Robertson is calling for a federal framework to formally identify stateless people living in Australia. (Supplied: University of Melbourne)
Refugee Advice and Casework Services (RACS) director Sarah Dale agreed, citing the lack of a clear pathway in Australia's immigration system for people without official identity documents.
"That is going to make it incredibly difficult for them to access visas and to apply for pathways," she said.
Asma experienced this first-hand.
Growing up in south-west Sydney, Asma and her family relied on bridging visas for three years and temporary visas for nine years.
Asma was unable to attend university as a domestic student despite growing up in Australia. (ABC News: Rex Siu)
After graduating from high school, she was ineligible for a HECS loan and classified as an international student — for whom fees are double those for local students.
"I wasn't able to study," she said.
Are stateless people still arriving in Australia?
Ms Robertson said very few stateless people have arrived in Australia since the implementation of Operation Sovereign Borders in 2013, which involved intercepting and turning back asylum seeker boats.
She said complex long-term residency pathways meant stateless populations including the Rohingya — as well as Feyli Kurds, Bidoon from the Gulf States and Palestinian people who have lived in Australia, often for more than a decade — struggle to get an education and gain employment.
Migration experts say very few stateless people have arrived in Australia since the federal government's turn back policy was introduced in 2013. (Reuters: Dadang Tri)
"The conditions they've been subjected to over the past decade or so have actually replicated the discrimination they faced in their country of origin," she said.
"They've essentially been living in legal limbo in Australia."
Statelessness was often misunderstood despite its legal and personal consequences, Ms Robertson said, with the online Australian citizenship application form an example of how stateless people can fall through gaps in the immigration system.
"You have to select from a drop-down box what your country of nationality is and there's simply no drop-down category for stateless, miscellaneous or other," she said.
"It's forcing people to select a nationality that's never actually recognised them."
An online Australian citizenship application form, where a drop-down menu has no option for 'stateless' applicants without a nationality. (Supplied)
Asma said this experience emulated what many Rohingya people were forced to do when identifying themselves in Myanmar.
"Sometimes the only way they can get a document is if they agree to identify differently," she said.
"It's very dehumanising because you don't have a choice."
Experts call for a national statelessness framework
Migration lawyers and refugee advocates are calling for a national framework to formally identify stateless people and provide them with a pathway to permanent residency.
Ms Robertson said Australia's relatively small stateless population meant addressing the issue was achievable.
"We're not talking about hundreds of thousands of people," she said.
University of Canberra citizenship legal scholar Kim Rubenstein explained under current legislation, a person born in Australia who has never been and is not entitled to any other nationality is eligible to become an Australian citizen.
"But it doesn't go far enough towards actually fulfilling the Statelessness Convention," she argued.
Kim Rubenstein says existing legislation could be amended to better support people who are living stateless in Australia. (ABC News: Michael Barnett)
"Amending that section to be more expansive would be a positive step for Australia's commitment for the reduction of statelessness," Professor Rubenstein said.
"[It would] also have an impact on the lives of stateless people who live, in every other respect, as Australians in Australia."
Ms Dale of RACS agreed.
"What we would like to see is a more streamlined, coherent and definitive process for people so that their statelessness is recognised across whatever process they're going before in Australia's immigration and citizenship system," she said.
Sarah Dale is the director of Refugee Advice and Casework Services, a non-for-profit that provides free specialised legal advice to refugees. (Supplied: Sarah Dale)
The Department of Home Affairs was approached for comment.
Asma's 'golden year'
After living in Australia for 11 years, Asma and her family were granted Australian citizenship in May this year.
"I'm no longer this unknown person, unspecified stateless person, I finally have a nationality,"
she said.
"I finally have a document that proves that I am worth as much as anyone."
Thanks to a scholarship, she graduated from the University of Technology Sydney with dreams of entering the field of public health.
Asma's mother Sajeda described obtaining her citizenship as feeling "newborn", with her family calling 2026 their "golden year".
Asma and her mother Sajeda at a community event hosted by the Australian Rohingya Women's Development Organisation in Sydney. (ABC News: Rex Siu)
Both now identify as Australian Rohingya.
As an artist, Asma said the art she creates reflects her struggles with identity.
"I can't be Rohingya without being Australian and I can't be Australian without being Rohingya," she said.
A mural by Asma and artist Yamin Rayhaf commissioned by Doctors Without Borders. (Supplied: Asma Nayim Ullah)
The family still worry about relatives who remain displaced in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Asma is the co-founder of the Australian Rohingya Women's Development Organisation, a grassroots charity that advocates for the empowerment of Rohingya women, children and their families.
"I want to get to a position where I can make it impossible to ever make another person stateless again," she said.
