to it. Their main tasks are to identify gaps through research, highlight case studies and share experiences among countries and regions. There is no funding for the Coalition at the field level and work carried out on birth registration by UNICEF only takes place through existing programs. In practice, this means that although activities are being carried out by both UNICEF and UNHCR on birth registration (Action 7), they are not always coordinated. The UN established the Legal Identity Agenda (UNLIA) and Task Force in 2019 to support the right to a legal identity (to be recognized as a person before the law, to be registered by the government and to have identity documents including birth certificates.) The right to a legal identity is a key part of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.9.16 Supporting the right to a legal identity is critical to ending statelessness, but ending statelessness is not given much attention in the UNLIA, UNHCR is not a chair of the Task Force and the SDGs do not expressly promote ending statelessness as a goal. More effort is needed to ensure stronger linkages between the UN’s work on the right to a legal identity and UNHCR’s mandate to end statelessness and protect stateless people both globally and at the country level. The Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement is a project between the World Bank and UNHCR. PRM contributes funding to the Join Data Center through UNHCR and sits on its management committee. The Center is developing recommendations on statelessness statistics, in line with Action 10 of the GAP, to improve statistics on statelessness which UNHCR and other actors have identified as critical to advance progress on statelessness. One output of this project will be the proposed, forthcoming International Recommendations on Statelessness Statistics for adoption by the UN Statistical Commission in 2022. Memorandum of Understanding and Policies between UN Agencies. UNHCR also has coordinated bilaterally with other UN agencies, such as the OHCHR, with a joint Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that is aimed at increasing the attention paid to statelessness in the work at the HRC, Universal Periodic Review (UPR), and the treaty bodies, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). In its workplan, OHCHR has agreed to work on statelessness in selected countries, including Côte D’Ivoire, the Persian Gulf Region, and the Dominican Republic. In 2020, UN Women and UNHCR also signed an MOU with the aim to ensure that communications are in sync on key issues, such as gender equality in nationality laws and other gender discrimination related to statelessness. These MOUs, however, do not appear to be very effective at country level, where UN partners continue to see UNHCR as taking not only a lead role on statelessness, but as primarily responsible for statelessness programming. Regional Initiatives. A number of important regional initiatives came up in our research, including the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime (the Bali Process) in Asia, which raises regional awareness of the consequences of smuggling, trafficking in persons, and related transnational crime.17 The Bali Process recognizes that statelessness is an emerging factor in understanding human trafficking, smuggling, and irregular migration in the region.18 In Box 7, UNHCR’s Regional Statelessness Officer explains how he supports the Bali Process, most importantly through the creation of the Bali Process Toolkit, which has emerged as a highly effective tool for countries in the region to prevent statelessness. Box 7: The Bali Process in Action “We have piloted [the process] in Thailand and are in the process of piloting in Pakistan and Vietnam. These are also activities that ultimately will benefit Thailand and Nepal. [We] have presented that process, for instance, at the UN Legal Identity Task Force in Nepal in a virtual session. I am providing regional background information to both countries on these processes. To a degree, the regional bureau is more actively involved in the national processes.” Promoting tools to mainstream statelessness into regional and global initiatives in cooperation with UNHCR is a highly effective way for PRM to make progress on statelessness. 16 See the UN Legal Identity Agenda webpage at https://unstats.un.org/legal-identity-agenda/. 17 Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons, and Related Transnational Crime, https://www.iom.int/bali-process 18 See the PRM-funded report on Thailand, The Nexus between Statelessness and Human Trafficking in Thailand at https://files.institutesi.org/Stateless-Trafficking_Thailand.pdf 9