Law or policy reform enabling automatic acquisition of nationality The nationality campaign was successful in processing, registering and providing documentation confirming the Sri Lankan citizenship of 190,000 Hill Tamils. Of this number, 72,000 were Hill Tamils with expired Indian passports who had to make a “special declaration”, facilitated by the nationality campaign. The rest were Hill Tamils who had never previously possessed any citizenship. Although extremely effective, the December 2003 campaign was unable to deploy to all tea plantation areas. It could also not reach areas in northern and eastern Sri Lanka where approximately 10,000 Hill Tamils had been displaced from the plantation areas. To remedy this, UNHCR launched a supplementary small-scale nationality campaign in the north and east of Sri Lanka in 2004. This followed the successful model of first launching a media campaign and training volunteers before deploying mobile units in government offices in designated areas to reach the concerned individuals. Approximately 700 Hill Tamils were registered and granted proof of nationality under this program before the December 2004 tsunami halted the operation. Resolving the remaining statelessness gaps in Sri Lanka UNHCR not only deployed protection officers to monitor how the campaign unfolded in 2003 and 2004, but also conducted an evaluation in 2006 to examine the impact of the campaign. This revealed that proof of their newly acquired Sri Lankan citizenship allowed many Hill Tamils to receive national identification cards and open bank accounts. However, Hill Tamils who had not received nationality documentation as part of the 2003-2004 campaign but had approached the Sri Lankan Government for citizenship documents reported that they were still required to give a statement or oath pursuant to the requirements of the 1988 Act, despite these requirements having been superseded by the automatic acquisition procedure under the 2003 Act. Furthermore, some Hill Tamils reported that they were discriminated against by the authorities when they tried to obtain birth certificates. Although the change in law and policy ensured that Hill Tamils acquired Sri Lankan nationality, more efforts are required to overcome discriminatory attitudes towards the community, including projects to promote their economic and social development and integration into Sri Lankan society. The 2003-2004 nationality campaigns raised awareness among other UN actors and NGOs of the need to assist the Hill Tamils, and UNHCR has collaborated with these stakeholders on a number of projects. One example is a 2007 initiative with the Government 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 13