UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett and statelessness activist Maha Mamo at a press conference after the opening of UNHCR’s
Executive Committee meeting in which they participated. © UNHCR/Pierre Albouy
The High-Level Segment on Statelessness opened
with UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett
interviewing statelessness activist Maha Mamo
about her 30-year-effort to obtain citizenship. This
was followed by a high-level panel including UN
Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, UN
High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi,
OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities
Lamberto Zannier, and British TV journalist and
presenter Anita Rani. The forum aimed to humanize
the problem of statelessness, to spur action, and to
show that the #IBelong Campaign is not only about
changing laws on paper but about changing lives
and offering hope to stateless people.
A civil society side-event showcased efforts to
end statelessness from a different perspective
and provided an opportunity to take stock of
significant achievements, identify steps States are
encouraged to take, discuss the role of civil society
in mobilizing action and identify key obstacles to
ensuring nationality rights for all. Marketplace stalls
highlighted work by activists and experts from
different geographic regions on a variety of thematic
issues.
Statelessness also took centre stage at the
Nansen Award ceremony where Azizbek Ahurov,
a lawyer from Kyrgyzstan, received UNHCR’s 2019
Nansen Award for his work to end statelessness
in the Kyrgyz Republic. Ashurov was praised for
his outstanding 16-year commitment to ending
statelessness in Kyrgyzstan, ensuring that those left
stateless by the break-up of the former Soviet Union
finally have citizenship. Ashurov runs Ferghana
Valley Lawyers Without Borders, an organization
which teamed up with the Kyrgyz Government to
identify all stateless persons on the territory and
provide legal support to resolve their situation as of
July 2019.
At a Treaty Event following the panel, Angola and
Colombia became the two latest States to join the
UN statelessness conventions, formally depositing
instruments of accession and ratification to the
treaties during the event itself. Angola acceded to
both the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of
Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the
Reduction of Statelessness. Colombia, already a
State party to the 1961 Convention, acceded to the
1954 Convention. This brings the total number of
States party to the Conventions to 93 for the 1954
Convention and 74 for the 1961 Convention.
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