Law or policy reform enabling automatic acquisition of nationality Sri Lanka nn Political awareness that statelessness persisted in the Hill Tamil community in Sri Lanka helped to spur reforms. nn A new law in 2003 provided for the automatic grant of nationality to some individuals and the chance to acquire nationality by declaration to others, with facilitated procedures for the acquisition of proof of nationality. nn UNHCR collaborated with the Government of Sri Lanka and the Ceylon Workers Congress to launch a nationality campaign that resulted in the distribution of documentation confirming Sri Lankan nationality to 190,000 Hill Tamils. nn Key elements of the nationality campaign included extensive awareness-raising and media outreach in local languages. A corps of volunteers was trained to conduct the campaign, while mobile clinics were deployed to provide legal advice to the affected populations and collect application forms for processing by the Government. nn UNHCR and a broad range of stakeholders undertook follow-up activities to ensure Hill Tamils received documentation confirming their Sri Lankan citizenship and to promote their social and economic integration into Sri Lankan society. nn Greater awareness of statelessness resulted in more legislative reform aimed at reducing statelessness among other groups in Sri Lanka. Statelessness among the Hill Tamils Sri Lanka presents one of the best examples of how legal and policy reform, combined with a citizenship campaign, can resolve a long-standing situation of statelessness in a short time. The stateless population in Sri Lanka consisted mainly of individuals descended from labourers brought over from India by the British between 1820 and 1840 to work on tea plantations. They are commonly referred to as “Tamils of Recent Indian Origin” or “Hill Tamils.” The majority of Hill Tamils have continued to live and work in tea plantation 4 areas, though some have been displaced to northern parts of Sri Lanka as a result of the waves of conflict that have shaken Sri Lanka since the 1980s. Shortly after Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) gained its independence, the 1948 Ceylon Citizenship Act and the 1949 Indian and Pakistani Residents Act were passed. Both laws discriminated against the Hill Tamils. The Ceylon Citizenship Act required that those born before independence prove that two generations of their families had been born in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, the Indian and Pakistani CAMPAIGN TO END STATELESSNESS WITHIN 10 YE ARS