EVALUATION OF UNHCR-LED INITIATIVES TO END STATELESSNESS – FINAL REPORT – VOLUME I or no presence or capacity. The decision to have a country presence seems to be influenced most by refugee and IDP issues, leaving potential gaps in coverage of key statelessness situations. 187. Changes to the Results Framework and RBM system are ongoing, and their potential influence on UNHCR’s statelessness work remains somewhat speculative. Some potential concerns raised by stakeholders include the planned elimination of the pillar structure for planning and budgeting and the intention to allow operations to link activities and budgets to more than one population group. According to the latest Administrative Instructions, for now operations will still budget by pillar for outputs, while the primary starting point for budgeting is based on context-specific results statements UNHCR plans to achieve in a given context, though it is unclear how long this approach will remain in practice. Both of these potential changes have logical merit from a programming perspective, where key informants offered numerous examples of activities and initiatives that support more than one population group, or where population groups overlap and thus one or the other has not always been identifiable in the RBM and budget system for analysis. The new Results Framework also offers clearer linkages to the SDGs. However, while these changes may make sense for good programming, the evaluators do expect that they may further complicate UNHCR’s ability to clearly demonstrate the link between resources and results specifically for its statelessness work, potentially reducing transparency and accountability. 188. The low number of impact and outcome indicators specific to statelessness (there are 2 ‘core’ indicators specific to statelessness, while 40 out of 52 may be considered relevant) might also be insufficient to fully capture changes in stateless people’s lives, particularly where country operations are not selecting their own further statelessness indicators and targets. Assessments will also need to be able to identify whether someone is stateless or of undetermined nationality and properly sample these populations, especially where UNHCR is not providing basic needs assistance directly for these groups to make sure they are factored into planning. The Statelessness Section could mitigate both of these issues by issuing comprehensive guidance on further indicators that country and regional operations could use to track results or signposting existing good practice indicators. The new RBM system will introduce six mandatory core impact indicators, which could help ensure some consistency across indicator design and selection, though the use of optional indicators will continue to pose challenges for the aggregation of results, cross-operation comparison and the calculation of change over time. Whether RB review country strategies (replacing COPs) and question whether statelessness-related flexible indicators are absent in contexts where statelessness is a known issue will be important. 6. Conclusions 189. UNHCR and partners have positively impacted on the lives of many stateless people and those at risk of statelessness, evidenced by the number of people that have acquired nationality, stories about the value of gaining citizenship, and the many good and innovative initiatives to prevent and resolve statelessness. By working together, UNHCR and partners have successfully raised awareness of statelessness and begun to build the necessary political will and capacity to prevent and resolve statelessness. Since 2001 there is a growing dialogue on statelessness and more political will to act, with notable successes in particular countries and regions, as well as at the global level. 190. The GAP has been a useful framework for guiding States, UNHCR and other partners, and its broad scope allows for application in a range of different contexts. Global diplomatic events, such as the 2011 Ministerial Intergovernmental Event and the 2019 HLS have inspired momentum and pledges for future action. Within UNHCR, in the absence of a strong theory of change for ending statelessness, the GSIP has provided a foundation for setting organizational direction. 191. Despite successes, the challenges of statelessness remain and will continue to remain beyond the lifetime of the Campaign. The most significant progress on granting nationality and mainstreaming and institutionalizing actions to end statelessness was seen in the period leading up to the launch of the campaign. Since then, statelessness tools and resources to support planning have continued to increase and improve, while overall resourcing has not grown and the pace of resolving cases of statelessness has been more gradual. Experience has proved that ending statelessness is a long-term and complex undertaking, which is highly dependent on political will and susceptible to set-backs – including other crises, such as COVID-19 – that can divert attention and either slow or reverse progress. 192. The invisibility of stateless persons and those at risk of statelessness in many places has hampered progress. Gaps in reliable data on stateless persons and the effect that statelessness has on their lives UNHCR / May, 2021 51