Journal of Human Rights 121 and underserved communities around the world” (ibid, p. 959). Moreover, it has been noted that the “discursive homogeniz[ation] [of complex experiences and needs] (as an “end of AIDS”) […] insulted the intellect of and marginalized those most affected” (Dowsett et al., 2021, p. 24). Such remarks raise important ethical considerations: that campaigns premised on ending a particular human experience (such as HIV/AIDS or statelessness) can risk alienating those with lived experience of the issue at hand. Efforts to eradicate a phenomenon of which people have lived experience can easily inadvertently eradicate, or invalidate, people’s personal experiences of that very issue, thus producing a cognitive distance toward the eradication campaign. In other words, we must consider how subjects affected by the issue feel about eradication framing. If not done well, eradication campaigns risk alienating, or rendering invisible, those affected by the issue. While the slogan “IBelong” is a powerful assertive statement, claiming right to place and identity, the associated rhetoric and visual representations used within campaign publicity material tell a somewhat different story. Indeed, transposed over translucent images of people presumably affected by statelessness, the subtitles of a series of IBelong posters read “No longer invisible, No longer stateless” (Figure 1). Ironically, such seemingly assertive rhetoric actually conditionally equates visibility and legibility of stateless people with a solution being found to their statelessness. This is an example of how marketing materials that pronounce invisibility can render people as such. This is reflective of tropes around invisibility that have traditionally been associated with the issue of statelessness. In contrast, stateless-led community groups have worked to establish spaces and platforms where stateless people can break down the constructed invisibility that surrounds their issue (e.g. Statefree, 2021). With the “[l]ack of compelling images and the missing ‘CNN factor’” long impeding public recognition of statelessness as an issue (Kingston, 2013, p. 81), visual representations leaning toward hypervisibility can also be just as alienating of the people campaigns should be serving. Indeed, as a stateless person from Lebanon, Joe Poladoghly (2021) has reflected on discomforting practices of NGOs “spotlighting” stateless people within their work. This “insert stateless person and stir” approach is strikingly illustrated by the visual materials used to launch and promote UNHCR’s IBelong campaign. Designed by UNHCR’s creative corporate partner United Colors of Benetton, a series of posters heralding the words “I Belong” present a carefully balanced set of figures of different ethnicities used to represent the world”s continents (see Benetton Group, 2014). With these figures squatting, rather uncomfortably with their bodies contorted, in the metal frame of a globe, statelessness is literally globalized within the founding discourse of the IBelong campaign (Benetton Group, 2014). Presumably, it is expected that the viewer will assume these individuals to be stateless, or at least acting to represent people who could be. However, while signaling ethnic and cultural differences through most wearing recognizably local dress, the individual stories and characteristics of the figures are in no way narrated. One could therefore be forgiven for questioning whether these are really stateless people. Given the uncomfortably contrived universal posture, though, it might even be ethically less concerning if they were indeed actors, models or even personae generated by artificial intelligence. Problematic visuals aside, the global notion of statelessness is clear. The marketing approach is to literally “globalise” statelessness – i.e. place the figures as stand-ins for the world. Indeed, the very promotional branding of the IBelong campaign speaks directly to how statelessness is constructed as a global discourse. While “IBelong” can be considered an effective call for inclusion, this replicated first person singular statement also belies the tendency to generalize a certain transferability of what it means to be stateless in any given context. Echoing Malkki”s (1995b) criticism of the “tendency to universalize “the refugee” as a special “kind” of person […] in their photographic representation” (p. 9), the somewhat unfortunate alternative reading here is that stateless people are vulnerable to being interchangeably substituted for one another, while being spun around like an inanimate object against their will by the manipulating hands of larger, more powerful actors (e.g. the UN agency, whose own logo is incidentally a pair of large, protective hands towering over an individual human figure). Drawing on my engagement with various stateless people (including activists) since 2009,4 I speculate that it is unlikely that