Refugees International 157 from the office of US Representative Diane Watson, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, participated in one such trip to Bangladesh and was instrumental in introducing the first legislative language on statelessness into the US Congress.10 It was also in 2006 when, in a bold forward-thinking step, the BPRM identified a focal point and pulled together a working group on statelessness. UNHCR representatives began to talk about the agency’s statelessness work when they passed through Washington. Concurrently, RI reached out to collaborate with other NGOs. These efforts resulted in a joint article with Human Rights Watch in Forced Migration Review,11 an op-ed with Kurdish Human Rights Watch in The New York Times,12 the organization of a country-specific working group with Jesuit Refugee Service on the Dominican Republic, and with OSJI, a roundtable at the UNHCR NGO consultations. RI organized informational trainings with several U.S. government departments and advocated successfully for a UNHCR led training workshop for Washington DC-based NGOs. Some of the groups that participated in the session later contributed to the UNHCR ExCom Conclusion related to statelessness.13 In time, RI began to focus on specific groups among the stateless. With RI’s support, for example, the U.S. Congressional Children’s Caucus, a group of House Representatives concerned about the rights of children, held an informal briefing about the discrete challenges faced by stateless children. RI Expands Efforts on Behalf of Stateless People (2007 to 2011) By 2007, RI’s direct advocacy with governments began to pay off. For example, after an RI mission to the region and following discussions with the Mauritanian 10 11 12 13 http://refugeesinternational.org/press-room/press-release/release-first-ever-legislation -prevent-and-reduce-statelessness-introduced-us-house-represen B Frelick and M Lynch, ‘Statelessness: A Forgotten Human Rights Crisis’ (2005) 24 Forced Migration Review 65 http://www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR24/FMR2439.pdf accessed 23 October 2013. P Ali and P Karadaghi, ‘Foreigners in their Own Land’ (New York Times, 14 February 2006) <www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/opinion/14iht-edali.html?_r=0> accessed 23 October 2013; citation: http://refugeesinternational.org/press-room/press-release/release-first-ever -legislation-prevent-and-reduce-statelessness-introduced-us-house-represen. UNHCR, ‘UNHCR Executive Committee Conclusions related to Statelessness’ (July 2010) <www.refworld.org/docid/4c499c022.html> accessed 23 October 2013. ; citation: http:// refugeesinternational.org/press-room/press-release/release-first-ever-legislation -prevent-and-reduce-statelessness-introduced-us-house-represen. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 153-162