The
United
Nations
High
Commissioner
for
Refugees
(UNHCR) is the UN agency
mandated to support refugees,
asylum-seekers, stateless people
and people displaced in their own
country. The organisation aims to
aid
these
communities
in
emergencies, to safeguard their
fundamental human rights and
help with resettlement. The
UNHCR has a dual mandate on
statelessness to identify and
protect stateless people and to
Ka+e Robertson visits the UNHCR Head Office, Geneva, September
prevent and reduce statelessness.
2023.
This includes the collection of data globally from Governments (including Australia’s) on
statelessness, which is published annually in the Global Trends Report.lxvii
In 2014 the UNHCR launched the #IBelong Campaign with the goal of ending statelessness by
2024. A key component of this project was the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness which
provided a guiding framework of ten actions to be undertaken by States (countries) to resolve
existing situations of statelessness, prevent new cases of statelessness and to better identify and
protect stateless populations.lxviii
The UNHCR has collaborated with the UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) to undertake
focused work targeting childhood statelessness. This includes the development of the Coalition on
Every Child’s Right to a Nationalitylxix and the publication of multiple research reports.lxx
In 2023 the UNHCR launched a new Global Alliance to End Statelessness to build on the gains and
momentum generated by the #IBelong Campaign and to serve as a platform to increase collective
advocacy efforts, catalyse political commitments to address statelessness and accelerate the
implementation of concrete solutions to statelessness.lxxi
Key UNHCR publications and resources of note:
Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons (2014)
IBelong Campaign
I Am Here, I Belong: The Urgent Need to End Childhood Statelessness (2015)
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