Journal of Human Rights 117 Although from the vantage point of an external observer a decade on, it is difficult to evidence the extent and nature of any cross-fertilization between the respective processes of framing the IBelong campaign and drafting the SDGs, it is notable that the latter—unlike the MDGs— “provides a crucial platform for advocacy, action, and outreach toward some of the world’s most marginalized peoples, including those who are stateless” (Apple & Bingham, 2017, p. 295). In all cases, my analysis of the campaign on ending statelessness takes a cue from Cimadamore, Koehler, and Pogge, who stressed the imperative for independent, critical study when considering the MDGs’ progress in addressing poverty: The official discourse of states and the UN system tends to focus on progress and success. This is understandable, since they need to remain credible and have a responsibility to sustain the momentum of the development agenda. Academics and civil society, however, need to push the boundaries of knowledge, and have a responsibility to elucidate and advocate for social justice as a necessary condition for better societies. Their task is to provide a critical view: to assess progress analytically, expose the lack of achievement, provide explanations for both—and offer genuine alternatives. (Cimadamore et al., 2016, p. 5) Although such globally established norms—like those of the MDGs and SDGs—are usually designed according to specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives, lessons particularly relevant to IBelong can be learned from other contexts in which the primary goal of a campaign is framed as one of explicit issue eradication by a given, often incredibly ambitious, deadline. In employing the term incredibly here, I deliberately draw on its double meaning to convey both a remarkable and an unrealistic ambition, underscoring the extreme unlikelihood that the supposedly “achievable” objective will actually be reached within the time-bounded milestone set out. As the IBelong campaign reached its final stages, it could hardly be further from achieving global eradication of statelessness. Indeed, only two countries worldwide had reportedly managed to fully solve their statelessness problems (UNHCR, 2019, 2024). In fact, owing to the lack of baseline data on statelessness in 2014, Bronwen Manby (2014) surmised that the increased attention brought by the IBelong campaign could cause the statistics to increase if “currently uncounted populations [would] come into focus.” In reality, despite data remaining partial and patchy (Manby, 2022), the campaign clearly failed to achieve its stated goals or, perhaps alternatively, the IBelong initiators failed to set realistically attainable campaign goals. In order to study the specific implications for the IBelong initiative, this section elaborates a theorization of the “ambitious eradication” framing by turning to a number of other campaigns delineated within the paradigm of ending a world scourge or plight: namely, the 2005 Make Poverty History (MPH) and the United Nations’ target of Ending AIDS by 2030. Both of these initiatives are directly linked to global Development Goals. First, MPH was established as a campaign to specifically galvanize efforts to hold the richest states accountable to the commitments they had already made under the Millennium Development Goals. To this effect, it took advantage of the United Kingdom’s presidency of the G8 coinciding with the UN General Assembly Special Summit to review progress made on achieving the MDGs in September 2005. For its part, the UN Ending AIDS initiative is fully in line with Target 3.3 of the SDGs to, “End the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases” by 2030 (World Health Organization, n.d). This ambitious target came after the United Nations announced achieving the AIDS targets within the MDGs (Goal 6), to halt and reverse the transmission and ensure universal access to treatment (UNAIDS, 2015). In contrast to goals of MPH and Ending AIDS, the eradication of statelessness the IBelong campaign seeks to achieve does not feature directly in either the MDG or SDG targets. As discussed below, however, the issue of statelessness arguably intersects with other global Development Goals, and the IBelong campaign is framed through a similar model of progress indicators to be considered against specific temporal milestones. Although there is no specific reference to statelessness within the SDGs, stateless people are undoubtedly included within the universal principles set out by this framework. Moreover, it