Law or policy reform enabling automatic acquisition of nationality Statelessness among the Hill Tamils Sri Lanka represents one of the best examples of how legal and policy reform, combined with a citizenship campaign, can resolve a long-standing situation of statelessness in a short period of time. The stateless population in Sri Lanka consisted mainly of individuals descended from laborers brought over from India by the British between 1820 and 1840 to work on tea plantations. They are commonly referred to as “Tamils of Recent Indian Origin” or “Hill Tamils.” The majority of Hill Tamils have continued to live and work in tea plantation areas, though some have been displaced to northern parts of Sri Lanka as a result of the waves of conflict that have affected Sri Lanka since the 1980s. Shortly after Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) gained its independence, the 1948 Ceylon Citizenship Act and the 1949 Indian and Pakistani Residents Act were passed. Both laws discriminated against the Hill Tamils. The Ceylon Citizenship Act required that those born before independence prove that two generations of their families had been born in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the Indian and Pakistani Residents Act required a seven or ten-year period of uninterrupted residence, respectively, and a specific level of income for an individual to qualify for citizenship. The Hill Tamils could not meet these requirements, rendering them stateless. A census conducted in 1964 estimated there were 168,000 Hill Tamils without citizenship. Agreements were reached with India in 1964 and 1974 to address statelessness among the Hill Tamils. Under the agreements, Sri Lanka would grant citizenship to 375,000 Hill Tamils, while India would grant citizenship to 600,000 members of the community and repatriate them. A total of 506,000 people applied for Indian citizenship and 470,000 applied to become Sri Lankan citizens. However, implementation of these agreements was slow and incomplete. Many of those who applied for Sri Lankan citizenship did not receive documentation confirming their nationality. As for those who applied for Indian citizenship, by 1982 there were 86,000 applications still pending with the Indian authorities, while 90,000 Hill Tamils who had been issued with Indian passports had not left Sri Lanka. In 1982, India informed Sri Lanka that the implementation periods for the 1964 and 1974 agreements had elapsed and it was no longer required to process claims for citizenship by and repatriation of Hill 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 9