700,000 people remained stateless in Cote d’Ivoire, approximately 300,000 of whom were “foundlings,” or children of unknown parentage. To address these gaps – and to ensure that the Commission’s decision would be complied with – the Justice Initiative, together with partners, developed a robust advocacy strategy to support implementation of the Commission’s decision. Role of Civil Society Mobilizing local civil society was important in many respects. The coalition known as Civil Society against Statelessness (CICA) was set up in March 2016 with the support of OSJI and the UNHCR office in Abidjan. It serves as the umbrella organization for individual NGOs and today brings together around 30 leading human rights NGOs in the country. Its mandate is to coordinate interventions on statelessness, interface with the government, and lead strategic advocacy around statelessness in Cote d’Ivoire. CICA holds quarterly coordination meetings involving NGOs, UNHCR, government and certain technical and financial partners. In addition to promoting domestic literacy on statelessness and the ACHPR decision, CICA was therefore in a strong position to support strategic advocacy at national and international level and ensured better coordination of initiatives and pooling of efforts in the fight against statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire. With the appointment of a government focal point on statelessness within the country’s justice ministry, the coalition also ensured better coordination and collaboration with government. When the government pursued efforts to develop and eventually validate a national action plan on eradicating statelessness, for instance, civil society had a seat at the table as a result of the coalition. The government has since engaged CICA as an official partner for implementation of the national action plan. A local civil society constituency like CICA and its members was also in a better position to provide credible feedback on implementation to the ACHPR. For this reason, when Cote d’Ivoire’s human rights report was due for review by the ACHPR in 2016, a shadow report and feedback from local civil society proved to be a valuable support to commissioners as they engaged with Ivorian state representatives around the case. Coordinated Advocacy and the ACHPR’s Role In many cases, ensuring state implementation of regional human rights decisions requires proactive efforts and engagements by the litigants/complainants. It also requires engagement at both national and regional levels to be coordinated. In addition to working with the defendantstate, litigants must always engage the ACHPR and honor their reporting obligations under the Commission’s rules of procedure. To that end, within 180 days of the Commission’s decision, the Justice Initiative made a submission to the ACHPR opining on what the Ivorian government had (and had not done) to implement the decision. Unlike many other cases, the Ivorian government provided a detailed response to that submission, which then became the basis of a roundtable discussion during the Commission’s ordinary session in April 2016. That roundtable event brought together representatives from the Commission, the Ivorian government, civil society, the national human rights commission and the Justice Initiative to discuss what needed to be done to implement the decision. 3