Five key takeaways on statelessness from UNHCR’s Global NGO Consultations

For 30 years UNHCR and NGOs have convened annual global consultations on topics of strategic relevance to develop policy, advocacy, and operational recommendations.

Starting with the positives …

Let’s start with the many positives. I was in Geneva as part of a delegation made up of 15 fabulous colleagues from different regions, with both lived and learned experience of statelessness. This brought home to me how much the statelessness field has grown since I first started coming to Geneva for the Global Consultations back in 2004, exactly 20 years ago.

Such a diverse and knowledgeable delegation made us a powerful force to raise statelessness issues during the Consultations, even when the issue was sometimes not adequately covered in panellists’ speaking points during the plenary sessions.

It also gave us a rich body of expertise when holding high-level bilateral meetings, for example, with Ruven Menikdiwela, the UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, and Elizabeth Tan, the Director of UNHCR’s Division of International Protection. Their receptiveness to meet with us, listen to concerns, and commit to further action was genuine, and very welcome.

From a European perspective, it was also very encouraging to find such a shared understanding and commitment to increased action on statelessness during a meeting I had with the UNHCR Europe Bureau Director, Philippe Leclerc. Statelessness is one of the Bureau’s strategic priorities, and we look forward to combining forces to tackle common issues of concern.

Side event to trail the new Global Alliance to End Statelessness

A particular highlight of the week was a side event on statelessness, which ENS organised jointly with Nationality for All and the UNHCR Statelessness Section. This well-attended event sought to underscore the strong linkages between statelessness and work needed to ensure gender equality and inclusion - the key themes of the Consultations.

It also provided a timely opportunity to trail the upcoming launch of the Global Alliance to End Statelessness, an exciting new multistakeholder alliance with real potential (if resourced properly and implemented effectively) to unlock solutions and galvanise governments and other decision-makers to introduce much-needed reforms.

A common theme highlighted by both panellists and participants was the systematic failure of States to identify statelessness, coupled with a lack of expertise among relevant stakeholders, and an absence of the tools needed to build their collective capacity to act. In my own presentation, I highlighted both our Statelessness Index as well as a new identification toolkit that we’ve developed and are keen to roll out in European countries and beyond if we can secure necessary resourcing. Indeed, this was one of the pledges we made at the Global Refugee Forum last December. This work would lend itself perfectly to the trans-regional exchange envisaged under the Global Alliance, including its planned convening of regular Regional Network Labs.

Statelessness – at times still the elephant in the room?

Notwithstanding the positive energy evident at our side event and the combined efforts of our delegation, at times it still felt like statelessness was the elephant in the room.

Despite the theme of this year’s Consultations being gender equality and solutions towards inclusion, there seemed surprisingly little reflection on the need for action to address the plight of marginalised stateless populations. They are often among the most excluded from society given that nationality typically provides a gateway to other rights and services. Moreover, it’s hardly a secret that gender discriminatory nationality laws in over 20 countries worldwide continue to prevent women from passing on their nationality on the same basis as men.

Such silence hinders solutions, so it was hugely welcome when one member of our delegation, Bina Ramanand from Family Frontiers in Malaysia, finally got hold of the mic as a panellist on Day 3. She used the platform to speak powerfully about the pioneering and inspiring work by her own and other stateless women-led organisations to campaign against gender discriminatory nationality laws. This in turn provoked several others to intervene from the floor to highlight different statelessness situations arising in other countries across the globe.

Looking ahead – five key takeaways 

Reflecting back on the week but also looking ahead, I have five key takeaways:

1. Recognising and utilising the growth of the statelessness field: In recent years the statelessness field has grown exponentially, as evidenced by the recent World Conference on Statelessness and ENS’s Madrid conference last year. However, some might question if UNHCR is keeping up as the main mandate holder, including with regard to the visibility it affords the issue in its own events and processes. For example, there need to be more statelessness experts speaking on panels during the NGO Consultations or in other UNHCR forums, and it would be both timely and impactful for the next High Commissioner’s Dialogue on Protection (expected in 2026) to have statelessness as a priority theme.
2. Increasing UNHCR budgeting, programming, and leadership on statelessness: Given the scale of the problem still to be addressed (despite commendable recent progress), when the #IBelong campaign ends later this year, UNHCR will need to scale up rather than reduce its prioritising of statelessness, including to meaningfully deliver on this issue as a current strategic priority for the High Commissioner. This will require strong high-level and cross-divisional leadership and engagement linked to processes such as the Global Refugee Forum, Our Common Agenda, and the SDGs. It will also require increased capacity and expertise across all of UNHCR’s regional and country operations. These are all recommendations accepted by UNHCR senior leadership as part of a 2021 evaluation of its statelessness work.
3. Maximising the launch of the Global Alliance to End Statelessness: When the Global Alliance is formally launched during a High Level Segment at ExCom in October, there needs to be an ambitious accompanying communications strategy in the run-up to and following the event, including to get statelessness across mainstream media channels globally. This was successfully achieved for the launch of the #IBelong campaign in 2014 when the then High Commissioner Antonio Guterres was highly visible talking about the issue in TV studios across the world.
4. Maintaining the Global Alliance through a strong engagement strategy: Leveraging action and reform to law and policy through the Global Alliance will require a systematic engagement strategy. This means concerted efforts by all stakeholders, including UNHCR operations at regional and country level, if more Solution Seeker States are to be persuaded to come forward and pledge and then implement reforms. This will also need to be supported by new tools and trans-regional learning and exchange to bolster the capacity of relevant actors to take action.
5. Sustaining the Global Alliance by leveraging increased resourcing: The statelessness field is currently chronically under-funded so it is imperative that the Global Alliance is able to entice new donors to come forward if it is to achieve its ambitious objectives. In particular, major bilateral and multilateral funding will need to be leveraged in support of multistakeholder partnerships and approaches over the coming years.

Working together as part of a multistakeholder approach, we can make all this a reality, but there is no room for complacency. Indeed, there is a need for much greater urgency.