Good Practices Paper Action 2 Ensuring that no child is born stateless UNHCR is publishing a series of Good Practices Papers to help States, with the support of other stakeholders, achieve the goals of its #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness by 2024. These goals are to: Resolve the major situations of statelessness that exist today Prevent the emergence of new cases of statelessness Improve the identification and protection of stateless populations Each Good Practices Paper corresponds to one of the 10 Actions proposed in UNHCR’s Global Action Plan to End Statelessness 2014 – 2024 (Global Action Plan) and highlights examples of how States, UNHCR and other stakeholders have addressed statelessness in a number of countries. Solutions to the problem of statelessness have to be tailored to suit the particular circumstances prevalent in a country. As such, these examples are not intended to serve as a blueprint for strategies to counter statelessness everywhere. (Indeed, some of the examples are of countries where gaps in law and practice remain.) However, governments, NGOs, international organizations and UNHCR staff seeking to implement the Global Action Plan will be able to adapt the ideas they find in these pages to their own needs. Background Action 2 of the Global Action Plan calls on States to ensure that no child is born stateless. Only if statelessness among children is addressed will the objective of the Global Action Plan – to end all statelessness by 2024 – be fully realized. The goal of Action 2 is to ensure that by 2024 all States have provisions in law to grant nationality to (i) children born in their territory who do not acquire another nationality at birth, (ii) children of unknown origin found on their territory, and (iii) children born to their nationals abroad who do not obtain another nationality at birth. Obligations to prevent and reduce statelessness among children are found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), both of which recognize the right of every child “to acquire a nationality.”1 1 1 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 24(3); Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 7(1). See also, UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), CCPR General Comment No. 17: Article 24 (Rights of the Child), 7 April 1989, Para. 8, available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/45139b464.html. CAMPAIGN TO END STATELESSNESS WITHIN 10 YE ARS