Journal of Human Rights 113 Aspects of UNHCR’s institutional culture including the perceived primacy of the refugee mandate, concerns about jeopardizing access and relationships in politically sensitive situations, and a short-term emergency mindset have negatively affected UNHCR’s ability to meet the campaign’s objectives for ending statelessness in some contexts where statelessness is a severe problem. (UNHCR, 2021, p. vii–viii) Finally, in some languages, there is also no satisfactory translation for the term stateless, which can be understood to further limit the universal applicability of protections associated with the international framework in practice, resulting in a lack of common identification between different profiles of people fitting the legal definition of a stateless person (Gyulai, 2012). Before considering the implications of decisions to frame action by the international community on addressing statelessness through the prism of eradication, the next section provides background context on the historic evolution of engagement on statelessness, with particular focus on UNHCR’s progressively expanding mandate on the topic. Readers already well-versed in this history may select to skip this section and move directly to the discussions relating to eradication framing that follow. A history of statelessness on the world stage: Between UNHCR’s mandate and (non)emergence as a global issue Scholarly consensus holds that statelessness emerged relatively late as a globally recognized human rights issue (Kingston, 2013; van Waas, 2014). Publications in the first half of the twentieth century focused on statelessness emanating from conflict between different countries’ nationality laws, taking a somewhat Eurocentric approach based on the perceived reality at the time that the “majority of stateless persons are in Europe” (United Nations, 1949; see also Siegelberg, 2020). Thereafter, debate about the issue largely stagnated. Falling within the domain of specialist legal expertise, statelessness consequently received limited interest from NGOs, academics, and actors outside the legal field. Although two international conventions on statelessness were adopted in 1954 (Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, 1954) and 1961 (Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, 1961), respectively, ratification and implementation of these instruments was relatively limited throughout the twentieth century to the extent that they were collectively referred to as, the “quiet sibling of the refugee protection regime” (Baluarte, 2015, p. 355). This relative neglect of international law’s statelessness instruments may be partly because, although the 1951 Refugee Convention (Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees) vests in UNHCR the “duty of supervising the application of [its] provisions” (Art 1 A[2]), the 1954 Convention assigns no agency with comparable responsibility. Indeed, it was only in 1996—more than four decades after adoption of the 1954 Convention—that the UN General Assembly (UNGA) conferred on UNHCR a broad mandate to address the lacuna that had emerged with respect to supervising the protection of stateless people (UNGA Resolution 50/152, 1996). Although study of archival records reveals that the agency had already “attempted to engage states on statelessness issues during the Cold War”—both through efforts to standardize stateless person travel documents and promoting accession to the Statelessness Conventions—“states remained indifferent … and instead remained preoccupied with refugee issues” (Seet, 2016, pp. 8–9). By the mid-1990s, new realities of mass statelessness following post-Cold War dissolution of Soviet and Eastern European states meant conditions became opportune for the international community to entrust UNHCR with greater responsibility for statelessness work (Seet, 2016, pp. 18-19). This marked the first major step in UNHCR adopting a formal role for addressing statelessness globally. The shift toward increased awareness of statelessness as a worldwide phenomenon was reflected two years later when the agency asserted that, “the problem of detention for those without an effective nationality appears to be a global one” (UNHCR, 1997). Although Manly (2014) appropriately asserted that this 1995 development “established a truly global mandate for UNHCR on statelessness” (p. 89), it did not immediately equate to a truly global response or strategic intervention on the issue. Rather, UNHCR was initially reluctant to