Law or policy reform enabling acquisition of nationality by registration were being rendered stateless as a result of the 1994 Constitutional amendment. The movement created a website33 to serve as a clearinghouse for information and advocacy strategies. A central element of the Brasileirinhos Apátridas approach was to engage with the media, both in the countries of the diaspora communities and in Brazil, to highlight the plight of the stateless children. By 2006-2007, the movement had begun to organize demonstrations in front of Brazilian consulates around the world to promote passage of the reform bill. When the United Nations Human Rights Council sat for its first session in early 2007, the movement drew the Council’s attention to the contradiction between the Brazilian nationality provision that was rendering children stateless and the universal human right to a nationality. Meanwhile, UNHCR lobbied for the Brazilian Congress’s accession to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, disseminating widely the Portuguese version of the Handbook on Nationality and Statelessness: a Guide for Parliamentarians. Complementing the highly successful awareness-raising campaign of Brasileirinhos Apátridas, the handbook increased awareness of statelessness and nationality issues among members of Congress and helped pave the way for accession to the Convention. In 2007, the Brazilian Congress finally scheduled hearings and a vote on the bill, which had been pending for seven years. Two members of the Brasileirinhos Apátridas movement, a former Vice-Consul of Brazil in Zurich and a well-known Brazilian journalist, represented the movement in Brasilia, lobbying members of Congress and drawing sustained media attention to the issue. These efforts paid off when the Brazilian Congress passed the bill, which paved the way for the passage and promulgation of Constitutional Amendment 54/07 on 20 September 2007 (the 2007 Constitutional Amendment). 33 The website of the “Brasileirinhos Apátridas” movement is still accessible at: http://brasileirinhosapatridas.org U N H C R > G P P A C T I O N 1 : R E S O LV I N G E X I S T I N G M A J O R S I T U AT I O N S O F S TAT E L E S S N E S S 33

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