IDLO AND UNHCR on statelessness and effective implementation of those conventions through domestic laws and policies remains the most effective way to prevent and resolve statelessness. The 1961 Convention remains the only universal instrument that elaborates clear, detailed, and concrete safeguards to ensure a fair and appropriate response to statelessness.26 Accession to the 1961 Convention equips States with the means to avoid and resolve nationality-related disputes and mobilise international support to address the prevention and reduction of statelessness. Accession may further boost legal transparency and predictability in States’ responses to the threat of statelessness through the promotion of common safeguards. Box 3: Compliance with the 1961 Convention in The Philippines The Philippines moved swiftly following its accession to the 1961 Convention in March 2022. The country’s Senate passed the Foundling Recognition and Protection Act in 2022. This legislation ensures that foundlings (abandoned children whose parents are unknown) found in The Philippines or in The Philippines’s embassies, consulates, and territories are recognised as Philippines’ nationals.27 Legal empowerment and access to justice When stateless people seek to access justice, they face multiple specific forms of exclusion in addition to the everyday barriers encountered by the general population. While broader issues of cost, proximity, and language impede access to justice for stateless people, stateless people are also negatively affected by their lack of legal standing, procedural obstacles (for example, related to lack of national ID), and fear of engaging with institutions that might behave prejudicially or sanction them based on their stateless status, among other challenges. Stateless people are often rendered invisible within the justice system, unable to claim their rights, receive legal services, or challenge their fundamental lack of legal status, and remain dependent on support from civil society and the few international bodies charged with addressing the problem. Denial of access to justice also negatively affects the ability of stateless people to obtain basic services, or remedy deprivation of service delivery: and to assert their right to participate in civic affairs, and therefore shape solutions to their own problems through democratic governance. The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor defines legal empowerment as the process through which people “are enabled to use the law to advance their rights and their interests in relation to the State and the market.”28 Among other dimensions, legal empowerment includes legal education, especially for the most vulnerable and excluded constituencies; provision of legal aid and paralegal services; protection of civic space that allows people to act collectively to demand realisation of their rights, and of human rights defenders who might be threatened in doing so. For the rule of law to act as an effective enabler of people’s access to justice and for sustainable development, all people must be able to realise their rights in practice,29 including through access to public services and participation in governance processes, irrespective of nationality or legal status. Pathways must be available for stateless people to demand fulfilment of their rights, seek remedy for violations, and resolve disputes with others and the State. For this reason, legal empowerment is essential, as shown in the examples below from various parts of the world. Box 4: Legal empowerment of stateless people in Uganda In Uganda, IDLO has supported pathways to justice for refugees who do not enjoy nationality rights and who thus, despite protracted residency, are unable to acquire Ugandan citizenship.30 IDLO’s Community Justice Programme supports local partners like World Voices Uganda to provide legal aid to South Sudanese refugees in Kyegegwa district, many of whom needed legal redress including legal identity. Trained Community Legal Volunteers have provided legal education and supported refugees, including those at risk of statelessness, to secure documents including movement permits and identity cards, realise their rights, access services, and resolve disputes. Community Legal Volunteers have also worked to link the informal justice structures, such as the bataka courts, to the statutory justice system in ways that improved access to justice for people experiencing displacement and statelessness. 9