AHMR African Human Mobility Review - Volume 11 No 2, MAY-AUGUST 2025 with the GCR by adopting pledging as a core mechanism for the operationalization of multi-stakeholder participation and burden-sharing. The stateless-specific events appear to be ad hoc events rather than quadrennial like the forums, raising concerns as to whether momentum will be maintained. While the GCR initially contributed to greater awareness and global mobilization toward the eradication of statelessness, Alexander (2024) argues that this has since waned. She notes, for example, that the burden of global advocacy since the 2019 High-Level Segment has fallen on civil society who have considerably less resources and reach than the UNHCR (Alexander, 2024: 139). A further mechanism for stock-taking is the publicly available online dashboard that collects and displays data on the implementation of pledges. As of February 2025, 15.71% of pledges are listed as fulfilled – 522 pledges out of 3,322 – 2.35% are in the planning stage and 30.46% are in progress. The vast majority of pledges – 51.48% – are listed as “N/A,” reflecting pledges where implementation data is not available or has not been reported. The pledging system is still nascent and there remain questions on its efficacy as a whole. Pledges often contain broad commitments to improvement but do not specify or quantify the financial or material contributions. Some states made pledges that contained funding commitments that had already been made under other initiatives (InterAction, 2021: 11). Pledges have been made without specifying timeframes, rendering it unclear whether the pledge was describing previous efforts, ongoing efforts, or commitments to future efforts. Assessed against the GCR’s main criteria – greater funding and multi-stakeholder participation – pledging has thus far fallen short. Of the pledges made at the 2019 Forum, only one sixth were financial commitments and 70% were made by the main refugee-hosting countries surrounding Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Najmah Ali notes that “donor countries, like the US and those in the EU, comprised solely 13% of all top crisis-related pledges, failing to show meaningful solidarity with those states hosting the vast majority of the world’s refugees” (Ali, 2022). This raises concerns as to whether the pledging system can contribute to measures taken toward eradicating statelessness. The following discussion contextualizes this within the SADC region. PART II STATELESSNESS IN THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY A stateless person is defined in Article 1(1) of the 1954 Convention as someone who is not considered a national by any state under the operation of its law. The legal recognition of nationality is a vital link between individual persons and the state to which they belong (Mbiyozo, 2019). Nevertheless, belonging to a particular state is not always available to all persons on the African continent. The consequences of statelessness are far-reaching, as stateless persons are unable to access socio-economic rights, such as housing, education, employment, and health care. Without valid and 116