120 T. MCGEE These tensions between marketing and campaigning raise the question of what exactly is the nature of MPH, a question certainly of relevance to IBelong. In the former case, Sireau (2009) contended that MPH “can be understood mainly as a [mass] communications exercise” (p. 5), and consequently considers it as, “one of the most inspiring episodes of social mobilization of recent years” (p. 13). Given that statelessness has traditionally been poorly understood by the public at large, and had arguably, therefore, failed to make it as a global human rights issue, it is certainly noble to seek to build awareness of the issue. Indeed, the coupling of such motivations with ambitious goals and framings is welcome when it results in galvanizing action toward concrete (even if sometimes utopian) milestones. Despite having “failed” by its own measures, the IBelong campaign has managed to raise the profile of statelessness on the international agenda, while engaging others outside the realm of citizenship law (including, importantly, development actors) to take the issue seriously. Notably, the campaign produced to key thematic outputs that brought the issue to the attention of those working on child and minority rights, respectively (UNHCR, 2015a, 2017a). However, unlike the coalition of NGOs and campaign groups that made up MPH and developed into an active social movement, the IBelong campaign was run through a much smaller staff structure within a single organization, and with barely any involvement from grassroots campaigners at its inception. This failure of IBelong to transform into a dynamic social movement is evidenced in the lack of traction gained by the UNHCR’s 2014 open letter about the cause of statelessness worldwide. At the time, the agency publicly called for “ten million signatures to change ten million lives” (UNHCR, 2015b). Although the logic of one signature to represent each estimated stateless person in the world would have been symbolically powerful, this ambition proved to be massively inflated as, by the close of IBelong in November 2024, only 100,529 people had lent their support to the letter (UNHCR, n.d). Although challenging to measure the extent, falling so spectacularly short of the very targets set by a campaign is likely to cause some level of damage to credibility for both the public and those involved in the issue. Drawing on the experiences of both MPH and End AIDS encourages one to question whether the IBelong campaign could have been more effective and sustainable without employing an eradication frame. The perceived prioritization of media and communication elements over strategic campaigning within the MPH was also evident in the controversy surrounding the use of celebrities to endorse the initiative (Frith, 2005). While celebrity involvement can raise an issue’s profile, it can also distract from the key message, and West (2008) notes that “[a]dvocacy organizations have to be careful not to blur their brand with that of the specific celebrity” (p. 82). It appears that this lesson was not learned by UNHCR for its IBelong campaign since such risks similarly presented themselves when Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett, who had been associated with the agency’s statelessness work, released her Netflix series entitled Stateless. Despite the title, the series is about Australia’s immigration detention system and disappointingly statelessness (as per UNHCR’s working definition – according to the 1954 Convention) barely features (Ekaterina, 2020). This not only compounds misunderstandings about what statelessness is, but also represents a “missed opportunity to engage in vital public framing of statelessness” (Kingston & Ekaterina, 2023, p. 4). The IBelong campaign thus confirms lessons learned from other contexts about how media hype around ending an advocacy issue alongside celebrity involvement can prove counter-productive in sustaining long-term interest once it becomes clear that the stated goal of eradication will not be met. Implications of eradication framing for lived experience It is also important to consider the discursive implications of eradication campaigns for those affected by the issue. For instance, in contemplating the “End AIDS” discourse, Kenworthy et al. (2018a) ask “Who stands to benefit from a triumphalism that few believe but many endorse?” (p. 962). It was on this basis that they noted in a (2018b) symposium “deep worries about what well-meaning but overly optimistic efforts to ‘end AIDS’ might look like for already vulnerable