protection, and their basic human rights. The following sections summarize views on what UNHCR and PRM are doing well and where there is room for improvement. Statelessness prioritization in UNHCR. Despite statelessness being part of UNHCR’s core mandate, interviewees regularly noted that: (1) funding for statelessness has not increased significantly for the #IBelong Campaign and (2) the removal of the Pillar system may further deprioritize statelessness within UNHCR. Box 14: Prioritization of Statelessness “I think one of the takeaways is, statelessness has not been institutionalized in some ways, and perhaps because we don’t provide a lot of support to stateless people. Whereas, we have huge programs for assistance and protection of refugees, which is, people would say, our main mandate. But we actually have the mandate for stateless, and I think it’s a really important thing to point out.” The evaluation’s sentiment analysis of informant responses revealed that, at the global level, 45 percent of all informants agreed that statelessness is “not prioritized” within UNHCR and not given enough funding, 51 percent viewed it as “sort of prioritized,” and only four percent percentage indicated high prioritization. Those with statelessness expertise were more likely to rank it as “not prioritized” than others at UNHCR, who were more likely to rank it as “sort of prioritized.” Box 14 highlights a common perspective on the issue. Impact of regionalization on statelessness resources. The regionalization process that is ongoing in UNHCR was aimed at improving the speed and responsiveness of service delivery by shifting personnel and decision-making authorities closer to the field and beneficiaries to allow for a faster and more effective response and greater collaboration with host countries and development actors. Some informants were cautiously optimistic that as UNHCR continues to move toward regionalization, there will be more opportunities to better mainstream statelessness and give it the attention it deserves. Others expressed concerns that regionalization has not translated to greater resources for statelessness activities. Box 15: Budget Cuts Impact Statelessness “There was a national staff from Kenya who had been a dedicated resource on statelessness whose post was downgraded after a budget cut. I guess if you are a representative in Kenya the first thing you cut is statelessness staff. If it had been Côte d Ivoire or Central Asia it would have been different. But in Kenya no one expects that you have the bandwidth to address statelessness.” Discussions with senior UNHCR acknowledged that regionalization is a high priority and an opportunity to ‘get it right’ in terms of ensuring that statelessness is more fully integrated into UNHCR’s work. Feedback from the Statelessness Section, however, revealed that since 2017 the Regional Statelessness Officer in the Middle East and North Africa region has not been devoted to statelessness 100 percent of the time; the position in the Americas was downgraded from a P4 to a P3 position and there appears to be an overall reduction in the amount of support for Regional Statelessness Officers and an ongoing lack of support staff. Box 16: Deprioritizing Given Refugee Mandate “[UNHCR] is seriously underfunded and under-resourced on statelessness. Just to give you an example, Thailand has at least 450,000 stateless persons, and so far, there is no exclusive statelessness officer on the international staff level, meaning P2, P3, P4 position. In other regions of the world, you have a dedicated P3 statelessness officer for far fewer people. I think they [UNHCR staff] are extremely skilled, eager, and really working hard on that. But at the same time, they are just under-resourced. That limits the potential really to resolve situations as smoothly and quickly as it might be possible with more staff.” Deprioritizing due to budget cuts. Interviews with field staff highlighted the inherent challenges that statelessness will always have within an organization that is seen as mainly in charge of humanitarian emergencies, which put an enormous strain on UNHCR’s budget (see Box 15 above). Similarly, in Thailand and Nepal, the observations made by statelessness staff highlighted that despite the large numbers of stateless people, staff do not have sufficient time to focus on non-refugee statelessness. The lack of resources in Thailand is further described in Box 16. Benefits of earmarked funding. As discussed above, PRM funding to UNHCR is usually not earmarked for statelessness activities, but evidence shows that earmarking funding for statelessness activities has been effective. One senior UNHCR official said that it would have been unlikely for UNHCR to make progress 15