EVALUATION OF UNHCR-LED INITIATIVES TO END STATELESSNESS – FINAL REPORT – VOLUME I Box 1: Examples of promising UNHCR country operation statelessness initiatives ▪ In the Philippines, UNHCR supported the identification of populations at risk of statelessness through a series of roundtable discussions and field visits in 2011. The country operation also facilitated the development of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Public Attorney’s Office and UNHCR, and the formulation of the joint Refugee and Stateless Status Determination Procedure (2012). ▪ In Tajikistan, after sustained UNHCR advocacy and collaboration with a coalition of statelessness actors, a new Constitutional Law on Nationality was adopted in 2015 and an Amnesty Law in 2019. In collaboration with UNDP and UNICEF, UNHCR also supported the government in addressing a range of issues with civil and birth registration through a process of civil registration reform (2019). ▪ As part of its response to the Syria conflict and the regional refugee crisis, UNHCR worked closely with governments and partners to prevent statelessness among conflict displaced persons by facilitating birth registration and issuance of vital documentation to persons of concern in Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, including creation of mobile courts, waiving legal fees and penalties, providing legal services inside camps, and raising awareness amongst communities. ▪ In the MENA region, UNHCR co-sponsored the ‘First Arab Conference on Good Practices and Regional Opportunities to Strengthen Women’s Nationality Rights’, which resulted in an outcome statement that served as the basis for the Arab Declaration on Belonging and Identity in 2018. The statement urged all Member States to enact reforms to uphold gender equal nationality rights and ensure every child has access to a legal identify and birth certificate. The UNHCR MENA regional office also took a leading role in developing and facilitating a number of global statelessness courses in San Remo in collaboration with the International Institute of Humanitarian Law. This included the development of a tailored Arabic course, which has since been offered to more than 90 participants from the region. ▪ In Ukraine, UNHCR directly participated in drafting the Statelessness Determination Procedure law, together with CSO partners. In so doing, they also invested in building technical capacity within the Government of Ukraine. ▪ In Albania, UNHCR worked with partners to support the Government to revise the law on birth registration to reduce the risk of statelessness, particularly among marginalized groups, including the Roma population. ▪ In the Europe region, UNHCR has played an important role in lobbying for attention to statelessness, through participating in regional meetings and events, facilitation of capacity-building and technical exchanges between States, the publication of good practice papers, and informal information sharing. UNHCR collaborated with the OSCE on the publication of a Handbook on Statelessness; and joint advocacy by UNHCR, the European Network on Statelessness (ENS) and others led to including statelessness in the EU Roma Strategic Framework and the EU Child Rights Strategy. ▪ In Côte d’Ivoire, a 2014-2016 programme to regularize the status of historical immigrants resulted in the issuance of 16,000 nationality certificates. ▪ In Kenya, UNHCR’s work with partners to strengthen data on these particular communities, as well as its lobbying with Government stakeholders in partnership with other organizations, contributed to the recognition and registration of approximately 1,500 people from the Makonde community in 2016, and 1,670 stateless Shona persons and 1,300 people of Rwandan descent in 2020. ▪ In Colombia, UNHCR established a working relationship with the government Registrar’s Office beginning in the mid-1990s, in the context of internal civil conflict and large-scale displacement, to collaborate on implementing a system of mobile registration in remote areas of the country, providing documentation to indigenous populations potentially at risk of statelessness. This long-standing partnership allowed UNHCR to successfully advocate, publicly and with the government, for granting Colombian nationality to over 27,000 children born to Venezuelan parents on Colombian soil between 2015 and 2021. 105. The evaluation observed an emphasis on activities to address the legal and administrative causes of statelessness; less on political, social and cultural drivers. In terms of responding to the impact of statelessness, a number of stakeholders highlighted gaps in terms of UNHCR’s response to the marginalization of stateless communities, or those at risk of statelessness, such as exclusion from schools, legal employment and social welfare. UNHCR responses generally correspond with institutional UNHCR / May, 2021 33