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Info Service on UN Sustainable Development (Oct24/01) Penang, 16 Oct (Kanaga Raja) — More than 100 States, civil society organizations (CSOs), statelessness-led entities, academics and other stakeholders have formed a new Global Alliance to End Statelessness, aimed at addressing the grave inequity faced by millions of people around the world denied a nationality, according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. UNHCR said the Global Alliance, which builds on the decade-long #IBelong campaign, was officially launched by UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr Filippo Grandi, during the annual Executive Committee meeting of UNHCR, which began on 14 October. According to UNHCR, the Global Alliance is set to start its work this month. It said that the Alliance will be led by a 15-member Advisory Committee comprising States, UN agencies, civil society and international organizations, and statelessness-led organizations. UNHCR will be providing support to the Global Alliance and host its Secretariat, in accordance with its mandate. The UNHCR Executive Committee meeting opened on 14 October with a dedicated “High Level Segment on Statelessness”. Addressing more than 100 government delegations and over 50 international organizations, Mr Grandi said that the leadership of the Global Alliance features a “whole-of-society” approach, placing those with lived experience at the center. “Over the last decade, we have made real progress around the world through the UNHCR #IBelong campaign, helping find solutions for communities and individuals that had been marginalized for generations,” he said. “But the work is not over. We must ensure that everyone – everywhere – has a nationality, is able to enjoy their rights and participate as full members of society, without discrimination,” he added. “This new, diverse Global Alliance of dedicated partners will now take the cause further. The vision is simple: a world where no-one is deprived of their fundamental human right to a nationality. Let’s be ambitious – ending statelessness is within reach,” said Mr Grandi. According to UNHCR, Turkmenistan announced during the meeting that it had officially resolved all known cases of statelessness on its territory, becoming the latest country to do so. According to UNHCR, granting citizenship to more than 32,000 people including refugees and stateless people in recent years, Turkmenistan attributed its achievement to a combination of strong political will, legislative reform, international cooperation and the modernization of civil identification and registration systems. “Being a member of this Global Alliance will send a strong signal to the rest of the world,” said Mr Grandi. “It represents a commitment. It will be a place to exchange best practice, advocate collectively and to push for resolutions on this issue.” He invited other states and entities to “join this historic effort”. Earlier, on 11 October, UNHCR released a new report on statelessness, in which it said that more than half a million people around the world who were living in the shadows, deprived of their right to nationality, have now acquired citizenship since the inception a decade ago of the #IBelong campaign. UNHCR had launched the campaign in October 2014 to mobilize international action to resolve the scourge of statelessness. The campaign closes this year. A major human rights violation, statelessness deprives individuals of basic legal rights, leaving them politically and economically marginalized, unable to access critical services like health and education, discriminated against and particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, said UNHCR. According to UNHCR, there have been many notable achievements over the last 10 years to enable hundreds of thousands of stateless people to acquire citizenship, to better identify and protect stateless people, or to help ensure that no child is born stateless. Since 2010, there have been a total of 77 new accessions to the 1954 and 1961 UN Statelessness Conventions. UNHCR also said at least 22 states have adopted national action plans to end statelessness in the last decade. From Turkmenistan to Portugal, North Macedonia, Rwanda, Brazil, Vietnam, Thailand and beyond, decisive action to counter statelessness has been taken, it added. For instance, UNHCR said that Kenya has granted nationality to members of the Makonde, Shona and Pemba minorities, while Kyrgyzstan became the first country to resolve all known cases of statelessness. According to the UNHCR report, more than 20 countries (including Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Netherlands, Paraguay, Turkiye, Ukraine, and Uruguay) have adopted new laws and policies to better protect stateless persons. It said that thirteen States (Albania, Armenia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Estonia, Iceland, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Republic of Moldova, the Philippines, and Tajikistan) have enacted laws to help ensure that no child is born stateless. Meanwhile, it said that Liberia, Madagascar, and Sierra Leone have advanced gender equality by granting women the right to confer their nationality on their children on an equal basis as men, which helps prevent childhood statelessness. “#IBelong was an ambitious campaign that sought to highlight this grave, invisible global injustice and to persuade states to take action,” said Ruven Menikdiwela, the UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner for Protection. “Great strides have been made to remedy this devastating blight, but the need for further action remains critical,” Menikdiwela added. She said that there are still countless people who do not exist on paper – and hence are pushed to the fringes of society, simply because of ethnic, religious or gender discrimination, or because of flaws in nationality laws and policies. In total, UNHCR reported 4.4 million stateless people in 2023. About 1.3 million stateless people worldwide are also displaced. +
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