AHMR African Human Mobilty Review - Volume 8 No 3, SEP-DEC 2022 particularly in developing countries — who are frequently ignored by authorities and are sometimes uncounted in national population censuses, databases, and administrative registries. Likewise, Target 17.18 could be used to improve civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems to integrate stateless persons and people of undetermined nationality in national development planning. The above targets can only be applied for the benefit of stateless persons, provided that the assumption behind them is inclusive, given the risk of neglect and vulnerability of the stateless. Nonetheless, the universal goals set out by the Sustainable Development Agenda recognise the roles all regions and states must play to achieve the goals rather than imposing an idea inflexibly on states. Hence, all UN member states exercise the free will to mainstream the SDGs into national planning, develop their national implementation strategies, and regularly review progress. This embraces engagements among stakeholders — civil society, private sector, local governments, and interest groups — and offers crucial opportunities for agenda setting and review, advocacy, and monitoring at all levels — global, regional, national, and local. Importantly, the SDGs provide development actors and stakeholders with the tools to break the cycle of exclusion, rights deprivation, and intergenerational statelessness, through development programming. Addressing statelessness requires constructive collaboration between actors in the development, human rights, and statelessness areas. This implies understanding the intersection and divergence between sustainable policies, development agenda, and (legal) frameworks. IV. CHALLENGING THE ARBITRARINESS OF ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION Statelessness and discrimination or inequality are mutually reinforcing; this underscores the need to take human rights and development into cognisance. Hence, the rights to equality and non-discrimination are entrenched in several international, regional, and national policies. The ICESCR, adopted by the United Nations in 1966, and entered into force on 3 January 1976, is the principal human rights treaty on socio-economic rights. Other treaties, such as the CRC, CEDAW, and the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, advocate for socio-economic rights.51 Article 6 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) guarantees every child’s right to registration at birth and to a nationality. The AU Commission’s draft ‘Protocol on the right to a nationality and the eradication of statelessness’ in Africa was included in the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.52 Despite these frameworks, the risk of intergenerational statelessness inhibits human rights-based development. 51 52 UNDG op cit note 6. ACERWC op cit note 29 at 3. 70