Born in Switzerland to a Brazilian mother and a foreign father, Irina (L) was only able to acquire Brazilian citizenship after the 2007 Constitutional Amendment was passed. © UNHCR / I. Canabrava Civil society mobilization among the Brazilian diaspora to advocate for constitutional reform The negative effects of the 1994 Constitutional amendment were immediately felt in the Brazilian diaspora. The children of some in this group were being born stateless, in some cases without any possibility of acquiring travel documentation to enable them to go to Brazil to meet the residency requirement for citizenship. Members of the diaspora began to lobby politicians in Brasilia to urge reform. One supporting Senator drafted a bill in 1999 to correct the shortcomings of the 1994 Constitutional Amendment. This bill was successfully passed in the Senate in 2000 and deposited before the Chamber of Deputies. Brazilians abroad began to rally around the reform bill to advocate for its passage. Slowly, a strong diaspora movement emerged. Faced with a stalemate before the Brazilian Congress, the diaspora began to mobilize. A civil-society movement, Brasileirinhos Apátridas, was created by Brazilians living in Switzerland. Chapters of the movement were also established in Israel, Japan, Germany, Portugal, France and Hungary – all countries where children of Brazilians born abroad were being rendered stateless as a result of the 1994 Constitutional amendment. The movement created a website31 to serve as a clearinghouse for information and advocacy strategies. A central element of the Brasileirinhos Apátridas approach was to engage with the media, both in the countries of the diaspora communities and in Brazil, to highlight the plight of the stateless children. By 2006-2007, the movement had begun to organize demonstrations in front of Brazilian consulates around the world to promote passage of the reform bill. When the United Nations Human Rights Council sat for its first session in early 2007, the movement drew the Council’s attention to the contradiction between the Brazilian nationality provision that was rendering children stateless and the universal human right to a nationality. 31 20 The website of the “Brasileirinhos Apátridas” movement is still accessible at: http://brasileirinhosapatridas.org. CAMPAIGN TO END STATELESSNESS WITHIN 10 YE ARS