Existing Statelessness determination procedure Caribbean adopted the Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action.14 The Plan of Action includes establishing effective SDPs and facilitating naturalization in the list of actions required to eradicate statelessness in Latin America and the Caribbean over ten years. The Organization of American States General Assembly has also adopted a series of resolutions on human rights protections calling on States Parties to establish SDPs.15 The Inter-American Court enacted an Advisory Opinion on the ‘Rights and Guarantees of Children in the Context of Migration and/or in Need of International Protection’, finding that Member States have a duty to identify statelessness and should adopt procedural mechanisms to determine the nationality of a child, or, where appropriate, his or her statelessness.16 In 2017, UNHCR issued ‘Draft Articles on the Protection of Stateless Persons and the Facilities of their Naturalisation’ which was a key tool in the establishment of SDPs in the Americas.17 Most of the States that established SDPs used it as a guide for their draft bills. This regional momentum contributed to seven countries in the Americas establishing SDPs between 2016 and 2019. 14 Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action, 3 December 2014, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5487065b4.html 15 See e.g. 4 June 2014, AG/RES. 2826 (XLIV-O/14) at [4], ‘To urge member states, without prejudice to their ratification of or accession to the international instruments on statelessness, to consider amending or adopting, as applicable, domestic laws to comprehensively regulate all matters relating to the identification and protection of stateless people and their appropriate documentation’; 14 June 2016, AG/RES. 2887 (XLVI-O/16), ‘to invite member states to establish fair and efficient procedures for determining statelessness and grant facilities for the naturalization of stateless persons’ at p. 150; 21 June 2017, AG/RES. 2908 (XLVII-O/17), ‘to urge all member states to establish fair and efficient procedures deemed appropriate for determining statelessness, grant facilities for the naturalization of stateless persons… To recommend that member states consider the possibility of including, in their domestic laws, fair and efficient procedures for determining statelessness, in keeping with the applicable international instruments, in order to deal with those cases through an approach based on human rights that allows such persons access to a nationality, in accordance with the domestic law of each member state’ at p. 92; 28 June 2019, AG/ RES. 2941 (XLIX-O/19), ‘To invite member states that have not yet done so… to adopt or amend their internal legislation, as required, to establish fair and efficient procedures to determine statelessness and grant facilities for the naturalization of stateless persons in accordance with the domestic law of each country’, at p. 132. Resolutions available at: http://www.oas.org/ consejo/GENERAL%20ASSEMBLY/Resoluciones-Declaraciones.asp. 16 Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Advisory Opinion Oc-21/14 of August 19 2014, requested by the Argentine Republic, the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Republic of Paraguay and the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, Rights and Guarantees of Children in the Context of Migration and/or in Need of International Protection, available at: http://www.corteidh. or.cr/docs/opiniones/seriea_21_eng.pdf, see [86, [94]-[95]]. 17 UNHCR, February 2017, Draft Articles on the Protection of Stateless Persons and the Facilities for their Naturalisation, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ad4e784.html. 8 U N H C R > G P P AC T I O N 6 : E S TA B L I S H I N G S TAT E L E S S N E S S D E T E R M I N AT I O N P R O C E D U R E S