AHMR African Human Mobilty Review - Volume 8 No 3, SEP-DEC 2022 nomads, and forced displacements, particularly by conflicts and environmental change. Côte d’Ivoire hosts one of the world’s largest stateless populations, with an estimated 1.6 million affected persons. The gaps in nationality laws induce the denial of legal identity and nationality, to the affected populations.58 The SDGs’ ‘leaving no one behind’ does not reference the right to a nationality. How does the concept of ‘legal identity’ without the ‘right to a nationality’ solve the predicaments of stateless persons? These questions agitate the minds of stateless rights activists. Given the risk of neglect, vulnerability, and discrimination of stateless persons, on the grounds of race, national origin, or religion and their exclusion from the national socio-political and economic arrangements, it is regrettable that many states do not even acknowledge their existence or statistics on stateless populations. Subjecting access to socio-economic services to citizenship undermines the goal of a human rights-based approach to statelessness. This truism remains worrisome amid states’ exclusive sovereignty in nationality matters and the limits of international law. Hence, the mismatch in the SDG goals and the implementation of national development plans. The minimal political incentive (or huge strong disincentive) for states’ support of stateless persons might impede the SDGs’ aspiration to ‘leave no one behind’. The SDGs’ development agenda’s mantra of ‘leaving no one behind’, can only be successful if complemented with rights-based approaches to development that eradicate stereotypes and ‘othering’ of the marginalised and excluded groups. The report of the Expert Group on Refugee, IDPs and Statelessness Statistics (established in 2016) and the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) decision (2021/224) in November 2021, was submitted for deliberation at the 54th session of the Statistical Commission in March 2023. While acknowledging the many causes of statelessness relating to challenges or gaps in nationality laws, policies, and manners of their application or practice, it seeks to provide feedback and valuable information and recommendations to improve official statistics on stateless populations nationally, regionally, and globally.59 The OHCHR collaborates with the UNHCR to promote awareness on statelessness, and its human rights implications and proffers solutions to it. The UNHCR-OHCHR joint Virtual Roundtable on ‘Equality and Non-Discrimination in Nationality Matters to End Statelessness’ (21 October 2021), highlighted the imperative of removing all forms of discrimination from nationality laws, policies, procedures, and practices.60 Nevertheless, the post-SDGs 2030 goals and targets should explicitly reference statelessness toward enhancing their socioeconomic rights and protection in national development processes. Additionally, development actors need to incentivise states to acknowledge the stateless persons’ Raymond A Atuguba Francis X D Tuokuu & Vitus Gbang 'Statelessness in West Africa: An assessment of stateless populations and legal, policy, and administrative frameworks in Ghana' (2020) 8 Journal on Migration and Human Security at 14, available at https://doi.org/10.1177/2331502419900771 59 United Nations Economic and Social Council (UN-ECOSOC) 'Statistical Commission fifty-third session: Report of the Expert Group on Refugee, Internally Displaced Persons and Statelessness Statistics' (2022) Vol (E/CN.3/20 New York, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199560103.003.0007 60 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 'Outcome document prepared following the OHCHR/UNHCR Virtual Roundtable on Equality and Non-Discrimination in Nationality Matters to End Statelessness' (2021) 1, available at https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2022-01/OHCHR-UNHCR-Event-Outcome.pdf 58 72