A stateless nation is an ethnic group or nation that does not possess its own sovereign state.[1] The term stateless implies that the group has the right to self-determination, to establish an independent nation with its own government.[2][3] Members of stateless nations may be citizens of the country in which they live, or they may be denied citizenship by that country. Stateless nations are usually not represented in international sports or in international organisations such as the United Nations. Nations without a state are classified as fourth-world nations.[4][5][6] Some stateless nations have a history of statehood, while some were always stateless.
The term was coined in 1983 by political scientist Jacques Leruez in his book L'Écosse, une nation sans État about the peculiar position of Scotland within the British state. It was later adopted and popularized by Scottish scholars such as David McCrone, Michael Keating and T. M. Devine.[7]
Stateless nations either are dispersed across a number of states (for example, the Yoruba people found in the African states of Nigeria, Benin and Togo) or form the native population of a province within a larger state (such as the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region within the People's Republic of China). Some stateless nations historically had a state, which was absorbed by another; for example, Tibet's declaration of independence in 1913 was not recognized, and it was reunited in 1951 by the People's Republic of China - which claims that Tibet is an integral part of China, while the Tibetan government-in-exile maintains that Tibet is an independent state under an unlawful occupation.[8][9] Some ethnic groups were once a stateless nation that later became a nation state (for example, the nations of the Balkans such as the Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, Slovenes, Montenegrins and Macedonians that were once part of the multinational state of Yugoslavia and gained independence during the breakup of Yugoslavia).
Stateless nations can have large populations; for example, the Kurds have an estimated population of over 30 million people, which makes them one of the largest stateless nations.[10] Multiple stateless nations can reside in the same geographical region or country: the Tuareg, Toubou, Rifians, and Kabyle in North Africa; the Chin, Kachin, Karen, Mon, Rakhine, Rohingya, and Shan in Myanmar; the Galicians, Cantabrians, Asturians, Aragonese, Basques, Catalans, Valencians, and Andalusians in Spain; and the Sardinians, Friulians, Ladins, Sicilians, Neapolitans, Ligurians, Piedmontese, Venetians and Lombards in Italy.[11]
The symbiotic relationship between nations and states arose in Western Europe during the 18th century, and it was exported to the rest of the world through colonial rule. Whereas the Western European nation-states are at present relinquishing some of their powers to the European Union, many of the former colonies are now the zealous defenders of the concept of national statehood.[3] However, not all peoples within multi-cultural states have the same awareness of being a stateless nation. As not all states are nation states, there are ethnic groups who live in multinational states that are not considered "stateless nations".
Only a small fraction of the world's national groups have associated nation states; the rest are distributed in one or more states. While there are over 3000 estimated nations in the world, there were only 193 member states of the United Nations as of 2011, of which fewer than 20 are considered to be ethnically homogeneous nation states. Thus nation states are not as common as often assumed, and stateless nations are the overwhelming majority of nations in the world.[3]