launched public information campaigns with UNHCR, and UNHCR trained civil registry officials. As part of the ‘Chiriticos Project’, the Costa Rican Civil Registry Office implemented an innovative programme that enabled elderly members of the indigenous community to access simplified late birth registration procedures. The binational initiative assisted thousands of members of the Ngöbe and Buglé community, whose births had never been registered in Panama or Costa Rica, to access late birth registration procedures and obtain birth certificates. This ultimately facilitated confirmation of their nationality. Collaboration at the regional level Regional collaboration has been a powerful engine of national action to address statelessness, including through improved birth registration practices. In Africa, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been at the forefront of efforts to end statelessness. After the adoption of the Abidjan Declaration of ECOWAS Member States on the Eradication of Statelessness in February 2015, ECOWAS Member States adopted the ‘Banjul Plan of Action of the Economic Community of West African States on the Eradication of Statelessness 2017-2024’, which features birth registration to prevent statelessness as one of its main objectives.36 The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) equally adopted at Ministerial level a Declaration of ICGLR Member States on the Eradication of Statelessness in October 2017 that promotes universal birth registration. In South-Eastern Europe, UNHCR joined the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and the European Commission to bring governments together to tackle long-standing causes of statelessness in the region. In 2011, this resulted in the adoption of the Zagreb Declaration signed by Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo (UN Security Council Resolution 1244/1999), Montenegro, Serbia, and The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.37 The Zagreb Declaration recommends that participating States adopt legislation that facilitates birth and late birth registration, waives fees for issuing documentation, establishes national co-ordination mechanisms, and actively involves Roma and other minority groups. Serbia, for example, made legal amendments in 2012 that introduced simplified late birth registration procedures; Montenegro followed suit in 2015. In the Middle East and North Africa, the League of Arab States (LAS) and UNHCR jointly convened a regional meeting on ‘Belonging and Legal Identity’ in October 2016, at which experts from LAS Member States, UN Agencies, civil society, and academia developed recommendations to enhance protection of children in the region, inter alia by providing them with documentation and a legal identity, strengthening birth registration, and aligning nationality laws with international standards.38 Chapter 6 of the Brazil Plan of Action established a programme to end statelessness in the Americas by 2024. Under this programme, States have agreed to work towards confirming nationality by facilitating access to late birth registration and strengthening bilateral and multilateral cooperation between civil registration authorities in different countries to address the needs of populations living in border areas. Numerous initiatives have been undertaken in the Asia-Pacific region, where a consensus now exists on the goal of universal birth registration and on the role birth registration plays in preventing statelessness. UNHCR co-hosted several high-level meetings on this topic, including two regional workshops on Good Practices in Birth Registration, respectively co-convened with the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights in 2012 and with the Regional Conference of Civil Registrars in the Asia-Pacific as well as UNICEF, ESCAP, WHO and Plan International in July 2014. As an organizing partner of the Civil Registration and Vital Statistics initiative in Asia and the Pacific, UNHCR co-hosted a Ministerial Conference in November 2014 which adopted the Ministerial Declaration ‘Get Everyone in the Picture’ and the accompanying Regional Action Framework that endorsed the goal of achieving universal and responsive CRVS systems by 2024.39 (For more information, see Section 3.) 36 See Objective 5.1 of the Banjul Plan of Action of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on the Eradication of Statelessness, 2017 – 2024, at: http://www.unhcr.org/591c38347. 37 Zagreb Declaration on the Provision of Civil Documentation and Registration in South Eastern Europe, Zagreb, 26-27 October 2011, at: http://goo.gl/R6yhsG. 38 Regional Expert Meeting on Belonging and Legal Identity in the Arab Region, Cairo, 17-18 October 2016, at: http://goo.gl/rjsLwG. 39 UNESCAP, Ministerial Conference on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics in Asia and the Pacific (10 December 2014), UN Doc. E/ESCAP/ MCCRVS/4, at: http://goo.gl/DGqUma. 10 CAMPAIGN TO END STATELESSNESS WITHIN 10 YE ARS