Acquisition of nationality through naturalization
applications to establish their nationality, regularize their status or apply for
naturalization. The Government established mobile groups of migration officials to travel
to settlements, register individuals and fill out application forms electronically, which,
once completed on the spot, would be printed, signed and filed.
Turkmenistan initiated this program with the skills, experience and materials it had
acquired from working with UNHCR on the 2004-2005 Refugee Registration Campaign,
as well as some additional material support. Between 2007 and 2010, the Government
registered approximately 4,000 persons with undetermined nationality. The authorities,
however, had not been able to reach all of the affected population and needed
additional resources not only to identify and register all relevant individuals, but also to
conduct the necessary analysis of their individual cases to resolve their irregular status.
After initiating this identification and registration drive, the authorities approached
UNHCR to discuss how to increase the scale of their efforts and improve related
processes. In 2008, UNHCR began to contribute to the Inter-Ministerial Working Group
on the Improvement of Legislation, an inter-agency forum to develop recommendations
for the improvement and harmonization of legislation and administrative practices
related to refugees and stateless persons. In February 2009, a Roundtable on
Statelessness, organized by UNHCR and the National Institute for Democracy and
Human Rights, brought together government officials who exchanged ideas on solutions
to statelessness in Turkmenistan. UNHCR then convened a Regional Statelessness
Conference for Central Asia in December 2009, which was held in Ashgabat.
As a result of these capacity-building activities, the Turkmen Government adopted
the Action Plan for Joint Activities on Prevention and Reduction of Statelessness
in Turkmenistan in December 2010. This created a framework for collaboration
with UNHCR on completing the identification and registration of individuals with
undetermined nationality and then reviewing and revising the relevant laws.
2011 identification and registration campaign
The 2011 identification and registration campaign (2011 Campaign) was designed to
scale up and complete the Government’s efforts from 2007 to 2010. It was undertaken
as a joint initiative between the Turkmen Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), the State
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