© UNHCR / J. Tanner A UNHCR protection officer addresses adults at a protection workshop run by Plan International in the remote town of Elias Piña, Dominican Republic, near the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. consequences of statelessness “so as to promote increased understanding of the nature and scope of the problem of statelessness, to identify stateless populations and to understand reasons which led to statelessness, all of which would serve as a basis for crafting strategies to addressing the problem”.22 UNHCR’s mandate to prevent and reduce statelessness encompasses a range of efforts to encourage states to identify and address the hardships of statelessness. These efforts include the provision of technical and advisory services for the drafting and implementation of nationality and related legislation and for the elimination of obstacles to acquisition or confirmation of nationality; the promotion of accession to the 1961 Convention and of recognition of “the right of every child to acquire a nationality, particularly where the child might otherwise be stateless”.23 lessness by, among other measures, adopting “measures to allow the integration of persons in situations of protracted statelessness”, and disseminating “information regarding access to citizenship”.24 In fulfilling its mandate to ensure the protection of stateless persons and to facilitate their ability to exercise their rights, UNHCR promotes accession to the 1954 Convention and urges states to “implement programmes […] which contribute to protecting and assisting stateless persons”.25 UNHCR encourages states to reduce state- Solutions for the Stateless in the U.S. 9