118 T. MCGEE has been argued that the SDG framing “‘to reach the furthest behind first’ and ‘leave no one behind’ clearly applies to those who experience the many negative consequences of not being recognized as citizens of any country”; as such, implementation of the SDGs “in turn can help to achieve the goals of the #IBelong Campaign” (UNHCR, 2017b, pp. 1–2). Working on this basis, a number of initiatives (e.g., UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2019) have sought to flesh out the relevance of the SDGs for (ending) statelessness work (see Govil, 2017). However, the fact that Target 16.9 of the SDGs calls on states to ensure that everyone has access to legal identity may be seen as potentially a clash of framing with the IBelong campaign. Both Sperfeldt (2022) and ISI (2018) have noted there is ambiguity and a lack of clarity around the concept of legal identity because, unlike statelessness, the term has no accepted definition in international law. This makes measuring the attainment of SDG 16.9 challenging. Beyond this, it is perhaps relevant to question whether the sequencing of respective IBelong and SDG targets actually make sense together: Is it logical to aim to eradicate statelessness by 2024, and then to take another six years to ensure access to legal identity for all? Could the latter not instead be considered a stepping stone in achieving the former? This debatable compatibility of the IBelong campaign with the wider global development agenda (i.e., the SDGs) raises questions about both frameworks. The lack of explicit reference to statelessness in the SDGs arguably exposes a weakness of the “legal identity for all” agenda, with some in the statelessness sector arguing that, “Nationality (and statelessness) must claim a place in the development discourse if SDG 16.9 is to contribute to the wider ambitions to leave no one behind and to reach the furthest behind first” (ISI, 2019, p. 3). At the same time, the clash of frames leaves us to consider whether the IBelong campaign is out of sync with reality. Are the 10 targets of its Global Action Plan really designed according to SMART principles: Are they specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound? Drawing on lessons from MPH and Ending AIDS, the next section considers the policy and ethical implications relating to eradication campaigns when the ultimate goal is unlikely to be achieved in the given timeframe. Designing to fail? A question of strategy and ethics Setting campaign interventions, goals, and framing is of critical importance, as this process often significantly shapes advocacy agendas and wider discourse, sometimes with unintended consequences. It is important to recognize here that focusing on prevention and/or eradication of a certain issue can, at times, conflict with the interests of those people already affected by it. For instance, a group of researchers have highlighted how AIDS eradication work resulted in “diverging priorities between HIV prevention and care and support for people living with HIV (PLHIV)” (Dowsett et al., 2021, p. 15). In the case of statelessness, a thought-provoking piece by Katja Swider (2017) questioned whether exclusive, or prioritized, attention on eradication might come at the expense of the protection of stateless people, or the provision of ultimately more suitable solutions. Here, it is somewhat curious that the UNHCR opted to frame its global campaign through a narrow eradication paradigm, given that prevention and reduction of statelessness are only part of the agency’s statelessness mandate (also encompassing the protection and identification of stateless people). It is further interesting that the campaign is premised on ending statelessness, given the fact that the scope of the 1961 Convention is limited to a focus on “reduction” as a result of resistance by drafting states to incorporation of the concept of eradication (Foster, 2022, p. 189), after moving away from much earlier allusions to eradication through the commitment to “abolition of all cases both of statelessness and of double nationality” in the Preamble of the Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Law (League of Nations, 1930).