Acquisition of nationality through naturalization Statelessness situations Viet Nam became host to tens of thousands of refugees from neighbouring Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. When UNHCR ceased its assistance to Cambodian refugee camps in 1994, it was estimated that approximately 9,500 former Cambodian refugees remained in Viet Nam.65 Approximately 2,500 of them continued to live in the former UNHCR camp sites, while an estimated 7,000 others were believed to have integrated into urban communities in Ho Chi Minh City and other provinces in the south of Viet Nam. Many of the Cambodian refugees in Viet Nam were of ethnic Chinese descent. At the heart of their uncertain future was the fact that Cambodia did not consider them its nationals, rendering them stateless. In 2002, UNHCR’s country office and the Vietnamese Government discussed the need to find a durable solution for this group. As a result, in 2008, the revised Nationality Law included a new Article 22 that simplified procedures for the naturalization of the remaining former Cambodian refugees residing in Viet Nam. The plight of the former Cambodian refugees prompted the Vietnamese Government to look at gaps in the nationality law that gave rise to statelessness. For its part, in 2005 UNHCR tapped the Surge deployment scheme to engage a protection officer to focus on statelessness in Viet Nam. Statelessness among Vietnamese women who left Viet Nam to marry foreigners was found to be another pressing issue in need of a solution. In 2005, the Vietnamese and French Governments co-convened an international conference addressing the phenomenon of “economic marriages” of Vietnamese women to foreigners.66 The Vietnamese Ministry of Justice estimated that between 1997 and 2005, more than 180,000 Vietnamese women had married foreigners, and that at least 10,000 additional marriages to foreigners occurred each year from 2005 to 2009. Most Vietnamese women moved abroad to marry their foreign husbands. It was the norm that a woman 65 Political negotiations to resolve the Cambodian conflict through the Paris Conference on Cambodia in 1989 and 1990 resulted in the Agreement on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict signed by Cambodia and 18 other countries under the auspices of the United Nations Secretary-General in October 1991. In this Agreement, Cambodia undertook to create an environment conducive to the voluntary return and integration of Cambodian refugees from abroad and the United Nations was requested to assist in the repatriation of Cambodian refugees. Those who had fled Cambodia in the 1970s were deemed no longer in need of international protection. 66 The publication of presentations (« Receuil des Interventions ») made at this regional conference entitled: « Les aspects pratiques du Droit international privé des personnes, de la famille et des biens » convened in Hanoi from 25 to 17 May 2005 is on file with UNHCR’s Statelessness Section. 56 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