Leaving No One Behind: Statelessness and the Sustainable Development Goals If it is accepted that statelessness is a development issue then how can States and their development partners integrate the question of statelessness into their programming? Statelessness can be integrated into development programming both by mainstreaming measures to ensure the inclusion of stateless people within existing initiatives and by developing specific initiatives directed at addressing the root causes of their exclusion. This will involve efforts to address institutional blind spots in relation to the potential risks specific to stateless persons and persons at risk of statelessness, as well as measures to reach out to include stateless persons within development programming, especially where there are known to be particular communities or geographical zones in which many people are stateless or at risk of statelessness. Since one of the main impacts of statelessness is lack of political representation, one important step is to give stateless individuals and communities themselves a voice in the debates over what is needed. The UNHCR High Commissioner’s Dialogue focused on development cooperation in 2022 and included stateless and forcibly displaced persons throughout the discussions.178 The global collaboration framework adopted by UNHCR and UNDP in parallel with this meeting pledges that both agencies will “systematically engage with national development authorities to advocate for the inclusion of stateless populations in national and sub-national development plans and processes.”179 The UNSDG Guidance Note on Human Rights for resident coordinators and UN country teams also includes an annex on statelessness.180 The situation of stateless people and risks of statelessness could be considered at three different levels: 1. Do no harm: taking a risk mitigation approach to ensure that all project designs take into account (potential) impacts on stateless persons, such that their rights will not be compromised by implementation and the risks of statelessness for vulnerable groups will not be increased. 2. Inclusion: taking active steps to ensure that stateless persons (and those without identity documents recognizing a nationality) are consulted on their needs and not excluded from development programming; undertaking targeted outreach efforts among groups known to be at risk of statelessness and exclusion. 3. Root causes: supporting measures to address the underlying causes of exclusion through the identification, prevention and reduction of statelessness. 4.1 Do no harm: impact assessments and risk mitigation Perhaps the most important recommendation in relation to the integration of statelessness into development programming is essentially cost-free: that is, to recognize the importance of statelessness as a reason for exclusion from rights and opportunities and specifically consider this possibility in the national context. This recognition can both avoid the risk that development initiatives inadvertently exacerbate the exclusion of stateless people and ensure that those who are stateless or who lack a documented nationality are explicitly included within the planning and implementation of any development project. Statelessness is, however, a poorly understood concept among development actors and even among those with a general background in human rights or refugee protection. It is easy not to consider the needs of those who are stateless when the issue itself is unknown. In many countries where there are known to be many stateless persons, national development plans and development cooperation frameworks do not recognize the problem as relevant. There is a need to check for blind spots.181 178. High Commissioner’s Dialogue on Protection Challenges: Development Cooperation, 2022, documents at www.unhcr.org/events/high-commissioners-dialogue-protection-challenges. 179. UNDP and UNHCR, “UNDP and UNHCR global collaboration framework for inclusion and solutions 2023–2025”, December 2022, 16, https://www. undp.org/publications/global-collaboration-framework-inclusion-and-solutions-2023-2025. 180. UN Sustainable Development Group, “UNSDG guidance note on human rights for resident coordinators and UN country teams”, 2017, annex on statelessness https://unsdg.un.org/resources/unsdg-guidance-note-human-rights-resident-coordinators-and-un-country-teams. 181. Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, “Together we can”; see also Kingston, Cohen, and Morley, “Limitations on universality”, 10. 47