The stateless population in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) cannot be precisely determined primarily due to the lack of a mechanism to identify and determine statelessness. De facto statelessness is prevalent in BiH, particularly amongst the Roma minority who are often unable to enjoy effective citizenship. An essential problem is that many Roma are unregistered in the basic registers of birth and consequently not registered as citizens.

It is difficult to determine the numbers of undocumented or unregistered Roma within the total population of Roma, which is itself estimated to be within the broad range of 40,000 to 100,000, as there has been no census in BiH since 1991. Because that census was conducted before the war, it is currently of limited use generally. In particular, the census did not categorize Roma as a separate ethnic group, so for the stateless population it has even less value. A just-completed registration of Roma in BiH conducted by the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees (MHRR) may shed some light on Roma numbers, however, the results are not yet available.

BiH has been a party to the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons since 1 September 1993. It has been a party to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness since 13 December 1996. The European Convention on Nationality was ratified in February 2008, in response to conclusions from a UNHCR, Council of Europe, and Ministry of Civil Affairs seminar held at the end of 2004.

Under its statelessness mandate, UNHCR has worked closely with the authorities to ensure that the main principles of prevention and reduction of statelessness have been incorporated into the complex citizenship legal framework. However there are other sets of laws and regulations passed by the various levels of authorities which are not necessarily compatible and do not take these principles into account.