of the Evaluation Team to speak with a wide array of actors “doing” diplomacy, particularly high-level diplomacy. However, in the Dominican Republic, with PRM’s support, the Evaluation Team was able to access current and former diplomats engaged in high-level diplomacy. DATA AND FINDINGS EQ1: TO WHAT EXTENT ARE PRM INVESTMENTS IN STATELESSNESS INITIATIVES—BOTH FINANCIAL AND DIPLOMATIC—CONTRIBUTING TO THE PREVENTION AND REDUCTION OF STATELESSNESS AND TO THE PROTECTION OF STATELESS PEOPLE? 5.1.1 Funding The U.S. is the largest single donor to UNHCR. PRM funding supports the prevention and reduction of statelessness and identification and protection of stateless people primarily through earmarked and unearmarked contributions to UNHCR's appeals. PRM has also funded the GCENR through the WRC, supported projects without a specific statelessness focus that worked on related issues (birth registration and civil documentation) and commissioned research studies on statelessness. Unearmarked funding. UNHCR’s budget is organized around four Pillars: refugees, stateless persons, reintegration (of returning refugees) and IDPs. The proportion of UNHCR’s overall expenditures allocated to Pillar II (stateless persons) stayed between less than 1 percent to roughly 1.2 percent of UNHCR’s budget since the launch of the #IBelong Campaign. Over the period of the evaluation there appeared to be a decrease in Pillar II funding from 1.2 percent in 2014 to 1 percent in 2020.5 Most UNHCR country programs do not allocate funds under Pillar II; of the three focus countries for this evaluation, only the Dominican Republic used Pillar II. Funding from other budget pillars is also used by many UNHCR country operations to address statelessness (e.g., in countries where stateless people are also refugees), so it is difficult to discern how much funding is actually allocated for statelessness; however, it is clear that funding for statelessness is far less than for other populations of concern. The Pillar system will be phased out of UNHCR’s practice and, in the future, all populations of concern will be assisted out of the same protection budget. In PRM’s contribution letter, PRM strongly encourages UNHCR to spend an amount on statelessness commensurate with its overall allocation. Discussions with UNHCR management revealed that they felt strongly about keeping the same funding arrangement with the U.S. However, through interviews UNHCR’s management staff acknowledged that UNHCR needed to rethink their overall fundraising strategy for their work on statelessness, as illustrated through the sentiments expressed by one high-level UNHCR staff in Box 1. Box 1: Unearmarked Funding “I can’t say earmarked [funding] is something we can really consider in UNHCR. We are always saying we don’t want to earmark funds so we cannot start now by saying that…. What we need to do is fundraise more specifically for statelessness. We don’t want the US to change the way they do their funding, but we should seek more funding for specific projects.” In 2014, at the launch of the #IBelong Campaign, there were insufficient human and material resources dedicated to work on statelessness within UNHCR. The budget for the campaign came from the existing budget. The limited resources available have led to a perception that statelessness is the “poor step-cousin, in terms of UNHCR’s refugee mandate,” as put by one high-level UNHCR staff. PRM Earmarked funding for statelessness. Only a small amount of U.S. funding to UNHCR is earmarked for statelessness activities. In 2020, PRM provided $571,053 in earmarked funding to support stateless programming to maintain the momentum created by the global HLS (discussed at greater length later in this report). In 2019, the HLS marked the midpoint in the #IBelong Campaign. There were a series of regional convenings that brought together government, UN, and civil society actors, who collectively committed to over 360 pledges towards statelessness eradication. The earmarked PRM funds are aimed at providing small amounts to targeted UNHCR country operations to assist governments in implementing 5 Information on budgets by pillar between 2014-2020 can be found at Financials | Global Focus (unhcr.org) 4