Statelessness and Young Children effectively stateless are assured their basic rights during both their early years and throughout life, a key starting point being universal birth registration. This sentiment is in line with the recommendation in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (‘UNHCR’) Global Action Plan to End Statelessness (‘Global Action Plan’), which would ensure that no child is born stateless.56 As outlined in the Global Action Plan, all states ought to have a provision in their laws that grants nationality to stateless children born in their territory, children of unknown origin found in their territory and children born to nationals abroad who are unable to acquire another nationality. 57 Moreover, the Global Action Plan goes on to recommend an assurance of birth registration for the prevention of statelessness.58 These safeguards are particularly important for pregnant women and young children who suffer lifelong consequences when they are denied basic rights to health, nutrition, safety and education. While multilateral and bilateral donors have increased investments in ECD programmes in humanitarian response settings, the majority of this investment is in children’s health and nutrition. 59 In addition to increasing the provision of trauma-informed programmes for supporting parenting and promoting early childhood care and education services, advocacy is needed. Particularly, there is a need to increase advocacy for the protection of children’s rights within and across countries, starting with campaigns to assure their right to have their birth registered and recognised, such as the campaign championed by UNHCR.60 Without such efforts, access to health and education programmes will remain limited for this vulnerable population of young children. Moreover, birth registration is one important pathway, offering children access to the same set of services provided to other children in the country. Investments should be expanded to help build the capacity of countries to improve basic services to all young children and their families, including access to economic and social supports to parents. Given the level of trauma faced by displaced families and those affected by statelessness, special attention is needed to support the social and emotional development of both young children and their families. Finally, data on displaced children must be improved and disaggregated by age; thereby ensuring that the youngest children and their distinct unmet needs are visible in order to implement appropriately targeted interventions (eg, traumainformed early parenting support and early learning opportunities). 61 Better estimates are needed of children living under various conditions that prevent them from having their birth registered or securing a national identity. Further research is needed to document the short- and long-term impact of statelessness on young children and their families. This should include a review of policies and programmes that are effective in addressing issues faced by young children and their families, particularly those displaced due to conflict and climate change. In summary, the experience of statelessness for young children behoves us to ensure their rights are upheld and that they and their families are protected. It is 56 57 58 59 60 61 UNHCR Global Action Plan (n 1). ibid 10–13. ibid 23–25. Kim Foulds et al, ‘Implementing a Humanitarian Needs Assessment Framework for Early Childhood Development: Informing Intervention Design for Displaced Rohingya Communities in Bangladesh’ (2021) 7(1) Journal on Education in Emergencies 112, 114. See, eg, ‘#IBelong’, UNHCR (Web Page) <https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/>. GC 7 (n 21) 19 [39]. 161