Leaving No One Behind: Statelessness and the Sustainable Development Goals In many countries there is a need to establish transparent and rights-respecting rules on the determination of nationality status, including in the context of procedures for the issuance of identity documents. Publicly accessible regulations should provide clarity regarding the evidence that must be provided to prove entitlement to nationality, the possibility of considering alternative forms of evidence if a person does not have the feeder documents usually required and the impermissibility of applying certain requirements to some people and not others (for example on discriminatory grounds). Initiatives to strengthen the rule of law should include the adoption of minimal procedural safeguards in processes for the issue of national identity documents and passports, including the right to know why an application has been refused, to access administrative and judicial review and to appeal an adverse decision. Training and procedures should be put in place so that front-desk officials are able to refer a person whose status is doubtful to a mechanism with the authority and discretion to resolve the situation itself, or re-refer them to an additional level of review. Support for legal and paralegal assistance to improve access to justice for poor and marginalized communities should include assistance in resolving challenges in establishing nationality. One important resource to support such initiatives is a practitioners’ guide on documenting citizenship and legal identity developed by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Namati.235 Another entry point could be programming training for civil servants and public sector staff with relevant mandates, as well as judges and lawyers, in order to broaden knowledge of statelessness and the tools to address it. In addition, rule of law initiatives could support the development of, and access to, independent oversight mechanisms for decisions on entitlement to documents recognizing nationality. This could include training to enable oversight by existing human rights commissions or similar constitutional bodies. In all cases, there should be insistence on the importance of a potential appeal to the courts; ideally, initially to local-level courts that are accessible to those in poorer or more remote neighbourhoods, with appeal via the usual routes. Particular attention should be paid to these issues when adopting new or upgraded identification systems (see Legal identity, below). Legal identity Fulfilling SDG Target 16.9 through the registration and recognition of legal identity, especially by achieving universal birth registration, will make an important contribution towards ending statelessness. But it is not sufficient. Ending statelessness requires recognition or grant of the particular element of legal identity that is nationality – ideally of the country to which the person has the closest connections. Whatever form of identification is required to access rights and services, those whose status as nationals is doubted are likely to be excluded. If a form of identification does not of itself secure access to rights and services then it risks – in addition – providing only surveillance for those whose nationality is doubted, rather than enabling them to legally establish a nationality and find a route out of poverty. For these reasons, the UNHCR 10-point Global Action Plan to eradicate statelessness includes two actions relating to the documentation of legal identity rather than one: not only Action 7, “Ensure birth registration for the prevention of statelessness”, but also Action 8, “Issue nationality documentation to those with entitlement to it” (see box (C), page 18). Legal identity initiatives should also encompass efforts under Action 2 of the UNHCR Global Action Plan to end statelessness, in order to resolve the status of those children whose nationality at birth is not clear and who may be at risk of statelessness.236 235. Open Society Justice Initiative and Namati, “A community-based practitioner’s guide: documenting citizenship and other forms of legal identity”, 2018, www.justiceinitiative.org/publications/community-based-practitioner-s-guide-documenting-citizenship-and-other-forms-legal. 236. UNHCR, “Good practices paper – Action 2”. 59