In Brazil, court ruling sheds light on the story of an undocumented and stateless woman
Source: Global Voices
Maria* was between seven and eight years old when a Brazilian woman came to collect her in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, and take her to Brazil, without any documents or official record of her existence, nor being noticed by any authorities when crossing the border.
“I never went back. From that day I stayed in the house of one [person], [then] in the house of another, then I was going between places. I’ve been all over Brazil. I worked for food, I lived on the street. I was living on the street because that person mistreated me, beat me,” she told a Brazilian court, over 40 years later.
Maria’s told her story during a court hearing. In May 2026, a decision by the First Federal Court of Corumbá, in Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil’s Midwest Region, recognized her right to reside in Brazil through family reunification, as she had three Brazilian children, and initiated the procedure for the formal recognition of her stateless status. The court decided that the government and the Federal Police must adopt measures to guarantee their residency regularization, without requiring documents considered practically impossible to obtain because of her position of bureaucratic non-existence.
According to data released by the Federal Public Defender Office (DPU), which represented her, Maria spent much of her life without access to rights considered basic by most people. Without a birth certificate, an identity card, or a passport, she worked informally while raising her children, and always faced obstacles to accessing public services, such as enrolling her children in school or applying for public benefits after the death of her partner.
Maria* was between seven and eight years old when a Brazilian woman came to collect her in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, and take her to Brazil, without any documents or official record of her existence, nor being noticed by any authorities when crossing the border.
“I never went back. From that day I stayed in the house of one [person], [then] in the house of another, then I was going between places. I’ve been all over Brazil. I worked for food, I lived on the street. I was living on the street because that person mistreated me, beat me,” she told a Brazilian court, over 40 years later.
Maria’s told her story during a court hearing. In May 2026, a decision by the First Federal Court of Corumbá, in Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil’s Midwest Region, recognized her right to reside in Brazil through family reunification, as she had three Brazilian children, and initiated the procedure for the formal recognition of her stateless status. The court decided that the government and the Federal Police must adopt measures to guarantee their residency regularization, without requiring documents considered practically impossible to obtain because of her position of bureaucratic non-existence.
According to data released by the Federal Public Defender Office (DPU), which represented her, Maria spent much of her life without access to rights considered basic by most people. Without a birth certificate, an identity card, or a passport, she worked informally while raising her children, and always faced obstacles to accessing public services, such as enrolling her children in school or applying for public benefits after the death of her partner.