We take action.
We create change.
Statelessness is a complex issue that calls for innovative solutions. We believe that joint action is the right way to create long lasting change.
Our work creates a community, raises awareness, reshapes narratives and creates access to equal rights for stateless people.
This is why we structured our work into three main areas.
Our Work
Community
The main focus of our work is our Statefree Community - an online and offline community for stateless persons to belong, connect and share experiences with each other. We want to create a safe space for stateless persons and their allies to share, ask and discuss about the topic of statelessness.
Visibility
The reasons for statelessness are diverse, but the effect is often the same: the lack of visibility leads to a lack of awareness, representation and recognition of stateless persons. We have decided to give the visual narrative of statelessness and stateless people back to who it belongs to - stateless people.
Equal Rights
True empowerment is based on equal access to rights. Our aim is to create inclusion and full participation for stateless people in Germany. To achieve this, we have started political advocacy in order to transform German law and improve current processes.
Community
A community
for stateless people and their allies
Statefree aims to provide a space in which statelessness can finally become visible. We want to empower stateless people by providing a space in which they can truly belong, share their knowledge and experience, connect to each other and learn about what is happening in the statelessness sector.
In this space those affected by statelessness and those working on statelessness can finally build community together.
Visibility
Statefree wants to put statelessness on the societal and political agenda.
We want to make sure that the most relevant experts on statelessness are adequately represented in solution findings: stateless persons.
In order to solve a problem,
it must be visible.
The reasons for statelessness are diverse, but the effect is often the same: lack of visibility leads to a lack of awareness, representation and recognition of stateless persons. This upholds the status quo for stateless people – a life without access to several human rights.
Despite the large number of stateless people, the issue remains highly invisible to the public eye.
And when statelessness is discussed, the narrative around statelessness is mainly shaped by non-stateless individuals. Stateless individuals remain underrepresented and tokenized when it comes to addressing statelessness and solution finding.
Meet Anny Faice
News: Together with Cosmonauts & Kings, Statefree has developed Anny Faice, an AI-Activist that aims to raise awareness on the issue of statelessness.
Learn more about Anny Faice in our FAQs and join @AnnyFaice on Twitter.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions about Anny Faice
Why does Anny Faice exist?
Anny Faice exists to increase awareness for and visibility around statelessness! Her goal is to draw attention to the issue of statelessness, the experiences of stateless individuals and also to the incredible work that is done by actors in the sector. Furthermore, Anny Faice will create visibility for the political change and transformation that is needed to improve the rights of stateless persons.
Why would we need a Social AI-Activist for this?
In today’s world of high frequency communication and information overload it is becoming increasingly hard to cut through the noise and create visibility for issues like statelessness – that have been traditionally overlooked. On the other hand, visibility is needed to make the public and politicians aware of the necessity for change. As a small organisation with limited capacity, communication and media outreach has become an increasing challenge for Statefree. Hence, the AI-generated nature of Anny Face supports content creation and communication for Statefree and simultaneously represents a chance to use Artificial Intelligence for positive social change.
What exactly is an “AI-Activist”?
The description of Anny Faice as an Social AI-Activist refers to the fact that Anny Faice was created as a digital character which operates on the basis of Artificial Intelligence.
This means that her appearance as well as her text-based communication is generated through AI. But this does not mean that Anny Faice operates without human monitoring and safety measures such as “human approval” of data and statements.
In short: Anny Faice is not a real person but an artificially generated character for digital communication.
How or from where does Anny Faice generate the information on statelessness?
Anny Faice – the AI-generated activist – works with a specifically created owned database. This database was co-created by Statefree in collaboration with stateless community members. The data has been validated by Statefree and can be updated and altered at any time. The current information and resources include publicly available content from trusted sources such as the Statefree Community blog, publicly published academic papers, publications from the European Network, the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion and other actors.
Outlook: Statefree is currently working on a format and process that enables stronger participation in the development of the database and therefore allows more Community members (organisations and individuals) to contribute to the database.
Who is “Cosmonauts & Kings”?
Cosmonauts & Kings (C&K) is an agency for political communication & consulting – digital by default. C&K specialises in communicating political and social concerns for politics (public), business (private) and society (civic) in an effective and relevant way and does this where opinions are formed – in the digital public sphere. It is the only agency on the German market that works for clients from the entire public arena, i.e. the private, public and civic sectors. Its core services include consulting as well as the development and implementation of strategies and campaigns.
Why did Cosmonauts & Kings and Statefree decide to collaborate on this?
The current AI debate focuses primarily on economic aspects or secondarily on societal implications. There is little interest in the meaningful, beneficial use of AI in the political context. Instead, mainly negative use cases such as disinformation campaigns have been discussed. While it is not in our interest to neglect the very important, critical debate about artificial intelligence, we have decided to proactively work on a positive use case. This means that Cosmonauts & Kings and Statefree want to counter this narrative by providing best case examples in which Artificial intelligence is able to support and scale positive impact – in this case for social good. The presence of Anny Faice on Twitter is the first attempt for this.
What technology is behind the AI Activist?
Anny Faice is powered by GPT-3.5-Turbo, the powerful technology behind OpenAI’s popular chatbot ChatGPT. Context is augmented with relevant documents,and the model is able to use memory to answer follow-up questions. In addition to context, the model is instructed to answer questions and create content that conforms to certain standards for language and values.
How can I and/or my organisation engage with Anny Faice?
On Twitter Anny Faice will post information but will also interact with other relevant stakeholders. If you are interested in also interacting with your Twitter account, please reach out to us via tech@statefree.world.
Stories & Media:
The Statefree Pod
The Statefree Pod is a podcast created by stateless people from our community for stateless people and everyone who wants to learn more about statelessness.
Art & Culture: IMAGINE
The Exhibition
Together with Florian Schwarz and 14 stateless people in seven different countries, we created our first exhibition project: IMAGINE. An exhibition portraying stateless people in an authentic and empowered way.
The launch of the exhibition took place in Constance at a state border.
You want to bring the exhibition to your city? Contact us.
Policy Work
Statelessness is a human rights issue affecting up to 15 million people world wide. The issue is solvable – through political change and transformation. Because in n a world governed and organised by nation states, living without a nationality equates to a life without access to the most basic human rights: stateless people are often lacking the right to work, to travel, to get married or to vote.
Why politics?
Advocacy means to publicly support and defend a certain cause. In our case: statelessness. This is exactly what we aim to do: We want to stand up and fight for the rights and fair treatment of stateless people. Stateless people often have no place to turn to, as no institution, no body of government represents them or promotes and protects their rights.
Politics decide who has access to certain rights and who doesn’t. Therefore, we have decided to broaden our areas of work – and in a sense our horizons as a new organisation – and start doing policy work and what is referred to as political “advocacy”.
Germany is modernizing its citizenship law
Our Comment on the Draft Bill
Currently, German citizenship law is being reformed. Statefree aims to utilise this window of opportunity and ensure access to naturalisation for stateless people.
With this goal in mind, we co-developed four main demands together with our community members and external partners and submitted an official comment on the government’s draft bill:
Our four main demands
Explicit mention of statelessness in the Nationality Act
By explicitly naming statelessness in the citizenship law, stateless persons become visible as part of society and at the same time the basic prerequisite for naturalisation in the future is set.
Facilitation of naturalisation for stateless children
We call for either automatic naturalisation of children born stateless in Germany or alternatively naturalisation upon application in accordance with international law.
Facilitated naturalisation for in situ stateless populations
Over 36,000 stateless persons born in Germany live in this country. Many more came to Germany as children. We demand the facilitation of the naturalisation process for them.
Reduction of the minimum period of residence
Germany is obliged by the 1954 Convention to facilitate the naturalisation of stateless people as far as possible. For this reason, we demand that the reduction of the general minimum period of residence for naturalisation for stateless persons.
Interview
Christiana
Statefree’s journey began with a single thought. It was important to us to create a space where affected people could support each other, exchange experiences and share their knowledge.
But in order to create true empowerment, stateless people need access to their rights. With the right support from JoinPolitics and a wonderful team, we started our advocacy journey at the beginning of 2022.
Become part of our journey and follow us
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