Background Background Action 1 of the Global Action Plan calls on States to resolve major situations of statelessness that exist today. Many large-scale and protracted situations of statelessness trace their origins to the time of a State’s creation, when particular groups of individuals were excluded from the initial body of citizens or subsequently deprived of their nationality for discriminatory reasons. Resolving such situations usually requires sustained advocacy for legislative and policy changes. Technical support from UNHCR may also be needed. This Good Practices Paper on Action 1 was first published in 2015 (2015 Good Practices Paper). The 2015 Good Practices Paper highlights key elements in the successful resolution of major situations of statelessness in certain countries. This second edition published in 2022 has been updated to reflect important developments in the country examples provided in the 2015 paper and expanded to include new country case studies. While Action 1 refers to major situations of statelessness, the good practices covered by this paper are relevant to the resolution of statelessness generally and not only limited to addressing large scale and protracted situations of statelessness. This paper illustrates that States generally address and resolve situations of statelessness through law and policy reform enabling stateless persons to acquire nationality either: 1) automatically by operation of law, 2) through a simple registration process, or 3) through the process of naturalization. States that have opted for the first approach have addressed statelessness by amending the rules for acquisition of nationality so that stateless persons are automatically considered nationals, provided that they fulfil specific objective criteria that demonstrate their strong links to the country. Most commonly, these criteria cover stateless individuals born in the territory or resident there before a specific date (or who are descended from such persons). This is usually the most effective way to resolve large-scale statelessness, as it does not require the individuals concerned to take any action to acquire a nationality. However, procedures will need to be in place to ensure that these individuals can acquire documents that prove they are nationals. The second and third approaches listed above both involve non-automatic procedures to acquire nationality. The difference between the second and third approach is that 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 3