72 Brad K. Blitz turned to the collection of data in the name of enhancing accountability and improving operational delivery.2 This includes gathering information to advance target-based agendas, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, and measure progress in meeting institutional priorities. Data collection is a tool of national and global governance.3 This chapter presents a critical account of how statelessness has been measured by the UNHCR and its partners. It examines how data have been collected and presented in official reports and joint advocacy initiatives to advance ambitious agendas, including UNHCR’s #IBelong campaign, which seeks to end statelessness by 2024. Although UNHCR is mandated to collect data on people in need of protection,4 and has for decades used statistical indicators to map refugee conditions, its focus regarding statelessness has been on measuring accession to international instruments and capturing the percentage of stateless people for whom nationality is granted or confirmed within a given year. While UNHCR has sometimes been accused of inflating refugee numbers,5 in this chapter, I argue that UNHCR has actively sought to reduce the number of people counted as stateless.6 I suggest that the process of undercounting is indicative of a revisionist turn in humanitarian management characterized by a fixation with narrow definitions and institutional priorities that demand “results,” which has been enthusiastically supported by donor states, NGOs, and academics. My central claim is that the ways in which UNHCR data are presented reflect an increasingly top-down logic that ignores the lived experience of stateless people and undermines the provision of humanitarian protection to some who may need it. The first part of this chapter explores the history of statelessness as a policy area within UNHCR. Developing Reichel’s argument of “normative path dependency,” I chronicle the evolution of UNHCR’s embrace of statistical indicators and the introduction of results-based management approaches to support its Global Strategic Priorities.7 I suggest that as the number of refugees appeared to be falling, UNHCR refocused on statelessness, mainstreaming this issue across the institution. The renewed interest in statelessness coincided with UNHCR’s shift in favor of results2 3 4 5 6 7 See E. Reichel, “Navigating between Refugee Protection and State Sovereignty: Legitimating the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,” in K. Dingwerth et al. (eds.), International Organizations under Pressure: Legitimating Global Governance in Challenging Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 195–231. See S. E. Merry, “Human Rights Monitoring and the Question of Indicators,” in M. Goodale (ed.), Human Rights at the Crossroads (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 140–150. Article 35(2) of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees obliges Contracting States to provide the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with statistical data relating to the condition of refugees, the implementation of the Convention, and any laws and decrees relating to refugees upon request. See G. Kibreab, “Pulling the Wool over the Eyes of the Strangers: Refugee Deceit and Trickery in Institutionalized Settings” (2004) 17 Journal of Refugee Studies 1–26. See “About the #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness,” www.unhcr.org/ibelong/. Reichel, “Navigating between Refugee Protection and State Sovereignty.” https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press