UNHCR Statelessness staffing at the Regional and Country Levels. There are seven Regional Statelessness Officers based in the regional Bureaus who were recruited between 2012–2014. All UNHCR core protection staff are expected to work on statelessness according to the needs, although it is worth noting that the Terms of Reference (TOR) for protection staff prioritize skills and knowledge relating to other populations of concern, such as promoting international refugee law principles, coordinating the cluster approach for internally displaced persons, and intervening in cases of refoulement.9 There are, however, staff with statelessness as the majority of their role in multiple countries. Box 4: Benefits of SURGE “The distinctive thing about SURGE was that it came on top of the resources the [Country] Representative already had. In practice, it was used to get resources that otherwise do not get prioritized. It was supposed to be short-term but, in the end, we would get a statelessness SURGE support [staff person] for over a year because we kept calling for extensions. You really realized this support was useful. The SURGE deployment often ended up resulting in the recruitment of a dedicated UNOPS person or UNV.” Other dedicated statelessness staff come through various types of temporary appointments, such as through the now-terminated Supporting UNHCR Resources on the Ground (SURGE) Project implemented by the International Rescue Committee (see Box 4),10 the UN Volunteer program through the UN Development Programme (UNDP), UNHCR temporary expert consultancies and the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) contracts. At least one U.S.-funded Junior Professional Officer (JPO), an entry-level, two-year post to UNHCR that is paid for directly by donors, has been deployed to work on statelessness in the Dominican Republic. In general, PRM has not used the JPO program to increase support to UNHCR for statelessness. Such temporary contracts are advantageous because they are less expensive to UNHCR as an organization than funding additional staff; but, with the exception of the JPO program, they come at a high cost to the country office, which must cover such contracts out of its country-level envelopes. In the three countries there were very different staffing numbers, levels of expertise and types of contracts. These differences did not correlate to the size or needs of the stateless population in each of the countries. Interviews with UNHCR staff in the three countries found they all had some experience working on statelessness in the past and had undergone training and all country-level staff demonstrated a high level of commitment and knowledge of statelessness. As one individual in Nepal explained, the Representative “referred to herself as part of the UNHCR protection team.” At the same time, interviews revealed that Representatives have limited opportunities to share best practices and lessons learned on statelessness. In Thailand, interviews found that the office benefitted from having an engaged Senior Protection Officer for the multicountry office. Both the Nepal and Thailand UNHCR offices also reported receiving helpful support from the Regional Statelessness Officer based in Thailand, as explained in Box 5. The Dominican Republic benefits from a robust eleven-person team dedicated to statelessness, many of whom are persons that were formerly stateless or at-risk of statelessness. Box 5: Regional Statelessness Officers “He is very hands on, responds very timely to requests, and has been particularly helpful on international legal comparisons. He has also offered very useful and relevant support to our national partner that he engaged with through his personal connections.” Under the direction of an international P2 Associate Protection Officer and a very engaged P4 Chief of Mission, the eleven national staff carry out a large portfolio of statelessness identification and reduction work and in many ways mimic UNHCR’s staffing configurations for refugee work. The Americas does not currently have a Regional Statelessness Officer, but one is being assigned and will be based in the Dominican Republic. According to UNHCR staff, in comparison to the Dominican Republic, there are significantly fewer resources available for statelessness work in Nepal and Thailand. 9 Protection Officer Profile, UNHCR at https://www.unhcr.org/570c9fa86.pdf 10All Associate Protection Officers, Protection Officers, and Senior Protection Officers at the P2, P3, and P4 level 7