UNHCR, Statistical Reporting, and the Representation of Stateless People 77 UNHCR on a managerialist path. She argues that a process of “discursive entrapment” accompanied by an “intellectual climate in which ‘new public management’ norms had gained clout, were equally relevant to determine the pace and course of the rise of managerial norms.”25 Over the past fifteen years, UNHCR has moved to rely on a sophisticated resultsbased management approach in the planning, implementation, and assessment of its activities.26 The approach, championed by the UN Development Group (UNDG),27 now features in UNHCR’s Results Framework, a log-frame-based tool that includes scores of indicators. This top-down orientation requires, for example, the introduction of “precise” and measurable criteria and “evidence of change.”28 Evaluations of UNHCR operations have repeatedly relied on such criteria.29 Statelessness features within UNHCR’s Global Strategic Priorities, which include a range of legal and humanitarian objectives. Key measures are described as “impact indicators” and “engagement” and include: reforming of law and policy consistent with international standards on the prevention of statelessness, principally through accession to the two UN statelessness conventions, and achieving annual targets of individuals who will acquire nationality or have it confirmed.30 Although the results-based approach has made important contributions to UNHCR’s work in its emphasis on transparency and benefits for budgetary planning in particular,31 the new ways of measuring impact have shifted it away from the needs of the most vulnerable. Reichel goes so far as to suggest that the new managerialism has created a tension within the organization over its priorities to advance its humanitarian mission and the reality that it is increasingly beholden to states.32 Arguably, the results-based approach has encouraged certain reductive practices, the effects of which have not been fully explored. In the case of statelessness, the imperative to present results, together with a narrow definition of who counts as stateless, has led the UNHCR to privilege certain statistical data sources over other information and in effect to round down a problem that they could not possibly estimate. The next section describes both of these shifts. Reichel, “Navigating between Refugee Protection and State Sovereignty,” p. 229. Ibid. 27 See UNDP, Results-Based Management Handbook (2011), www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/ program/dwcp/download/undg_rbm1011.pdf. 28 See UNHCR, Practical Guide to the Systematic Use of Standards & Indicators in UNHCR Operations (2006), www.unhcr.org/uk/statistics/unhcrstats/40eaa9804/practical-guide-systemat ic-use-standards-indicators-unhcr-operations.html. 29 See, e.g., Oxford Policy Management, Evaluation of UNHCR’s Implementation of Three of Its Protection Strategies: The Global Education Strategy, the Updated SGBV Strategy, and the Child Protection Framework (July 2017), www.unhcr.org/5a183d9c7.pdf. 30 UNDP, Results-Based Management Handbook, p. 10. 31 See PDES, Measure for Measure. 32 Reichel, “Navigating between Refugee Protection and State Sovereignty.” 25 26 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press