SOLVING STATELESSNESS also acknowledged by the Bangladeshi Supreme Court in 2008, when it ruled that members of the Urdu-speaking minority, who had been treated as stateless for more than 30 years, had in fact been Bangladeshi nationals since independence. In its judgment, the Court observed that, “[b]y keeping the question of citizenship unresolved on wrong assumptions over decades, this nation has not gained anything – but rather was deprived of the contribution they could have made in nation building”.31 Although the worlds of statelessness and development have rarely come together in the past, the evidence shows that statelessness is a problem from a development perspective. A positive step is that the development, human rights and humanitarian worlds have recognised the need to better complement each other in the future. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in an open letter on human rights and the post-2015 development agenda stated that, “[…] the Post-2015 Agenda must be built on a human rights-based approach [… I]t means explicitly aligning the new development framework with the international human rights framework – including civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights, as well as the right to development. In essence, it means deliberately directing development efforts to the realization of human rights.”32 The High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda also highlighted the importance of ensuring that “no person – regardless of ethnicity, gender, geography, disability, race or other status – is denied universal human rights and basic economic opportunities”.33 Finally, commitments to transcend the humanitarian-development divide, made by the UN Secretary-General and eight United Nations agencies at the first World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016, acknowledge the historic opportunity presented by the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, “under which both humanitarian and development actors can work together to ensure the safety, dignity and ability to thrive of the most vulnerable”.34 31 32 33 34 Bangladesh Supreme Court, Writ Petition No. 10129 of 2007, Md. Sadaqat Khan (Fakku) and Others v. Chief Election Commissioner, Bangladesh Election Commission, 18 May 2008. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights in the Post-2015 Agenda, 2013. The High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, supra n3, Executive Summary. World Humanitarian Summit, Transcending humanitarian-development 53