Breaking the Presumption campaign is Action 6: to ‘grant protection status to stateless migrants and facilitate their naturalization’. 5 In this regard, regional action plans to end statelessness that consider SDPs have been adopted. The Americas region was first, adopting the Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action: A Framework for Cooperation and Regional Solidarity to Strengthen the International Protection of Refugees, Displaced and Stateless Persons in Latin America and the Caribbean. 6 Subsequently, in West Africa, the Banjul Plan of Action of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on the Eradication of Statelessness (2017–2024) was adopted. 7 The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights has also recommended that states pass legislation providing SDPs for the identification and protection of stateless persons. 8 However, the recognition of SDPs as a key tool for the identification and protection of stateless populations has not yet been yet decided by international jurisprudence. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights have not yet decided a case recognising SDPs as an obligation derived from the 1954 Convention. Currently, there is no international jurisprudence ordering and recognising the obligation of states to adopt SDPs or modify an SDP norm according to international standards. Despite an increasing awareness in recent years that stateless persons are distinct from refugees and migrants, and that statelessness issues shall be addressed distinctly from migrants and refugee issues, states continuously fail to adopt procedures for statelessness determination with autonomous character, separated or apart from refugee or asylum procedures and protection mechanisms. There are countries, mostly in Europe, where statelessness status is recognised through ad hoc mechanisms. Consequently, the recognition of such status is diluted in norms, administrative practices and measures, or judicial practices within the scope of asylum, migration or citizenship procedures, and not formally recognised in specialised procedures for statelessness status determination. 9 As Noémi Radnai explains, ‘It is not simply “black or white” whether a state has an SDP established in its domestic law’, it should be considered a formal SDP when the law expressly regulates a specific procedure for the determination of the status of stateless persons. 10 5 6 7 8 9 10 ibid. Brazil Declaration and Plan of Action: A Framework for Cooperation and Regional Solidarity to Strengthen the International Protection of Refugees, Displaced and Stateless Persons in Latin America and the Caribbean (Declaration, Cartagena +30 3 December 2014). Banjul Plan of Action of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on the Eradication of Statelessness 2017–2024 (Action Plan, Economic Community of West African States 2017). See Due Process in Procedures for the Determination of Refugee Status and Statelessness and the Granting of Complementary Protection (Report, OAS and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, 2020) (‘Procedures for Determination of Refugees and Statelessness’); ‘IACHR Welcomes Actions to Protect the Right to a Nationality and to Prevent Statelessness in the Region’, Organization of American States (Press Release, 2019) <http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2019/042.asp>. Ad hoc mechanisms for statelessness status recognition can be found in Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Norway, Croatia, Malta, Poland, Ireland and Belgium. See ENM Inform: Statelessness in the EU (Report, European Migration Network, 2016) 2, 5, 8, 13 <https://www.emnluxembourg.lu/wpcontent/uploads/2016/11/EMN-Inform-Statelesseness-in-the-EU.pdf>. Noémi Radnai, Statelessness Determination in Europe: Towards the Implementation of Regionally Harmonised National SDPs (Working Paper No 2017/8, 5th ed, Institute of Statelessness and Inclusion 2017) 6 <https://files.institutesi.org/WP2017_08.pdf>. 61

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