Statelessness, Development, and Protection of ‘Disadvantaged Groups’ stateless populations, although both remained unsettled. In most instances, they are supported by UN agencies such as the UNHCR and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and UN Committees, including the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, a joinedup action by the UN to boost the protection of human rights through social and economic factors for development, safety, and security. Its 2003 draft report, by the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of non-citizens, revealed the huge gap between the guarantees of international human rights law to non-citizens and the realities of the challenges confronting them. It also provided the agenda setting for activists and human rights monitoring organisations working with the UNHCR, e.g., Refugees International and the Open Society Institute’s (OSI) Justice Initiative.22 The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and PLAN International’s joint ten-year campaign on universal birth registration was instrumental in addressing the challenges of both de jure and de facto stateless persons. This includes the challenge of proving one’s nationality before accessing basic services, travelling, marrying, giving birth, and protecting children from the dangers of legal anonymity, or trafficking. Plan International’s 2005 campaign featured in the recommendations of the UN Secretary-General’s 2006 Study on Violence Against Children, and the human rights monitors’ reports and legal cases brought before international tribunals improve the profile of statelessness. The significance of this reflects on increased western governmental agencies’ direct involvement in coordinating the cause of preventing statelessness since 2006.23 The joint African Union (AU)–UNICEF ‘No Name Campaign: For Every Child, a Legal Identity, For Every Child Access to Justice’, launched in February 2019, identifies birth registration as fundamental for access to child-friendly justice. It has rallied actions and rapid implementation by AU member states toward a commitment to universal registration of a child’s birth and repositioning civil registration and crucial statistics in Africa, to address the indignity of invisibility.24 Nevertheless, the persistent idea of proving one’s nationality before accessing basic services is discriminatory and requires urgent attention. Moreover, the agenda on statelessness was also popularised by mass protests across the Global North in the mid–2000s. This was geared toward transforming the (Westphalian) state into more inclusive models of political organisation and supporting the growing transborder migration and the recognition of multi-ethnic and multi-national populations. The protests were often linked to the treatment of minorities and the right to non-discrimination. The opinion found support among grassroots campaigners, non-professional associations, local NGOs, migrant community organisations, and collective pushing to regularise the status of irregular workers, unsuccessful asylum seekers, and ‘over-stayers’. This includes the May 2006 protest by over one million persons across American cities on the plights of 22 23 24 Brad Blitz 'Statelessness, protection and equality’ (2009) Forced Migration Policy Briefing No 3 at 1. ISI op cit note 5. African Union 'No Name Campaign' (2021), available at https://au.int/en/newsevents/20200617/no-name-campaign 61