The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) initiated the regional initiative “Get Everyone in the Picture” on civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS). CRVS goals are tied to SDG 16.9 on the right to a legal identity, discussed above. UNHCR and PRM participate at the ESCAP headquarters level, but this evaluation showed that many CRVS and legal identity projects are moving forward at the country level without adequate information about how they may impact statelessness. Box 8: Statelessness as Political Issue “[Statelessness] is a political issue that has been so sensitive [in Nepal]. We work together with the UN, we target the Parliamentarians, the women’s groups, and we have a common partner FWLD. We are all behind the CSOs as that is how best to work in Nepal and these coordination groups work well for that.” National Level Coordination. Some of the UN structures that operate at the global level, such as the UNLIA Task Force, highlighted above, have been replicated at the national level. For instance, in Nepal there is strong coordination between UNHCR and development partners on issues impacting persons without citizenship certificates (who may be stateless or at risk of statelessness), including in the Legal Identity Working Group. This key coordination mechanism is officially co-led by UNHCR and UNICEF with the involvement of the UN Resident Coordinator, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), UN WOMEN and UNDP.19 Informants highlighted the importance of working in a coordinated and coalition-based approach to address statelessness (see Box 8). In Thailand, UNHCR leads the Statelessness Working Group, which has been rated as highly effective by all participants, not only for information sharing but also for developing a statelessness lens for all UN and INGO member programming. There is no analogous working group in the Dominican Republic. As a result, the UN organizations in Dominican Republic appear to operate in silos. In Nepal, UNHCR has been successful at mainstreaming statelessness throughout UN Country Team (UNCT) planning, including the COVID-19 Country Preparedness and Response Plan to ensure that refugees and people without a citizenship certificate are integrated into the UN’s socioeconomic response framework. UNHCR in Nepal has also made sure that people without citizenship certificates are included on checklists for funding proposals offering good practice on coordination on statelessness issues. The UNCT is an appropriate forum for mainstreaming statelessness, given the cross-cutting nature of statelessness programming, however coordination on statelessness among UN actors could be more systematic at the country level. 5.1.3 PRM Staffing and Assistance PRM staff time spent on statelessness. PRM created the role of Statelessness Focal Point in 2006. While the Statelessness Focal Point has been highly effective, less than a quarter of the Focal Point’s time is allocated to monitoring and supporting statelessness work. The position was created to provide minimal support to PRM’s regional offices as PRM envisioned that RefCoords would take on the majority of the statelessness monitoring, reporting, advocacy and diplomacy. Interviews with PRM staff, including RefCoords and the Office of Policy and Resource Planning (PRP), revealed the importance of increasing the capacity of PRM Washington to work on statelessness by significantly increasing the Focal Point’s time allocation to work on statelessness. RefCoords, especially those working in humanitarian contexts, highlighted challenges in devoting sufficient time to statelessness issues. RefCoords interviewed in Thailand and Nepal spend less than five percent of their time on statelessness work and RefCoord Assistants estimated that they spent roughly 10 percent of their time on statelessness work—the equivalent of a few days per month. Their main tasks around statelessness included monitoring and reporting on the situation at their post, participating in working groups, meeting with UNHCR, bilateral meetings with host country on statelessness programming governments at the working level and meeting with civil society actors. Of the 12 RefCoords who filled out the evaluation’s survey, all indicated that they spent less than 10 percent of their time dedicated to statelessness. 19 In Nepal the group working on the UN Legal Identity Agenda is referred to as the Legal Identity Working Group. 10