Framework, to continue addressing protection issues of vulnerable Iraqis, including stateless persons, persons at risk of statelessness, internally displaced persons, returnees, refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants. One of the Protection Platform’s priorities for 2023 is to improve access to civil documentation, recognizing that the lack of proof of nationality and barriers to accessing documentation leave individuals at risk of statelessness and prevent them from accessing their rights. A regional consultation on statelessness was held in Beirut, Lebanon, with the participation of 35 representatives from civil society organizations, NGOs, UN agencies, academic/research institutions, and affected individuals across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region on March 6 and 7. The consultation provided a forum for discussion on the opportunities and priorities for advancing statelessness objectives in the MENA region. During the consultation, several recommendations for multi-stakeholder collaboration were identified, with follow-up activities underway. The national taskforce on the eradication of statelessness in Zambia updated and adopted a National Action Plan to End Statelessness in February. The updated plan recommends that Zambia accedes to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and amends the Citizenship Act No. 33 of 2016 and the National Registration Act Chapter 126, among other measures. The amendments would facilitate the establishment of a statelessness determination procedure and raise the maximum age by which foundlings would be presumed to have Zambian nationality. In March, an Expert Commission established to draft a new constitution of Chile commenced its work. UNHCR and UNICEF presented recommendations to the president of the Expert Commission, which focused on inclusion of the right to nationality, eliminating the jus soli exceptions related to parents’ legal status, safeguards for the loss of nationality, new facilities for naturalization of stateless persons, and an effective remedy against nationality deprivation. The draft text of the Expert Commission will be reviewed by an elected Constitutional Council. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a group of civil society organizations, together with the National Committee on Statelessness, validated the civil society roadmap to advocate for accession to the UN Statelessness Conventions. UNESCAP, with the support of the Philippines Statistics Authority in Manila convened a meeting of South-East Asian Civil Registrars from 7 to 9 February. At this event, UNHCR facilitated discussions on the importance of inequality assessments in civil registration. Inequality assessments evaluate the disparities in access to and coverage of civil registration and vital statistics systems across different population groups. UNHCR encouraged civil registrars to use the Bali Process Civil Registration Assessment Toolkit to conduct the inequality assessments. A second meeting of the statelessness working group of Côte d’Ivoire took place on 26 January, in Abidjan, attended by high-level representatives from state institutions and NGOs involved in implementing the national action plan for eradicating statelessness. During the meeting a roadmap of priority measures for the remaining year of the #IBelong Campaign was adopted. It includes the creation of a government task force on statelessness, improving public awareness on the issue and adopting legislation to create pathways to nationality for stateless person, among other priority measures. UNHCR > The Campaign to End Statelessness | January – March 2023 Update 7