and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as government experts from Ukraine and the Slovak Republic who explained how they had tackled statelessness in their own countries. Representatives of UNFPA, UNICEF and NGOs from each of the four Central Asian states also participated in the discussions, which were also attended by representatives from the diplomatic community in Ashgabat. The summary which follows has been structured along the lines of the four main themes of the Conference: identification, prevention and reduction of statelessness and the protection of stateless persons. Each topic was introduced by UNHCR which shared the preliminary findings on identification, prevention and reduction of statelessness and protection of stateless persons of the regional project on statelessness. For each topic, the office underlined best practices and progress made in the field of legislative and administrative reform in Central Asia. I. Identification of Statelessness After the hosts from the Government of Turkmenistan, UNHCR and OSCE had welcomed the participants, UNHCR introduced its mandate on the prevention and reduction of statelessness and protection of stateless persons. Implementing this mandate requires that stateless persons are identified and that factors which create statelessness are well understood. UNHCR’s Executive Committee has instructed the Organization to support the effort of governments to identify stateless persons and to cooperate with other UN agencies on programmes which could be used for this purpose, including population census and use of data from birth and voter registration. Participants from Turkmenistan shared the experience gained in identifying persons with undetermined nationality and stateless persons through a registration program carried out by the State Migration Service of Turkmenistan. The delegation from the Kyrgyz Republic explained how three NGO surveys supported by UNHCR in Kyrgyzstan had permitted the identification of approximately 10,000 stateless persons. No similar registration campaign or survey has thus far been carried out in Kazakhstan or in Tajikistan. Nonetheless, the Kazakhstan delegation explained that 8,730 persons are registered by the government in Kazakhstan as stateless, the majority of them (7,006 persons) hailing from other CIS countries. The representative of the State Statistical Committee in Tajikistan mentioned, however, that 2,300 persons identified themselves as stateless in the last census in Tajikistan in 2000, while 326 persons are officially registered as stateless in the country. Participants underlined the joint efforts which have been undertaken by governments and specialized UN agencies in the region to implement national population census. UNFPA mentioned the joint agreement between UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDP and UNHCR to support the preparations for the national census in Turkmenistan in 2012 as a good example of inter-agency cooperation in this area. It was noted that census questions may be formulated in such a way that they can serve to identify stateless persons. In other situations targeted surveys can be carried out with this aim after the census has been completed. The Deputy Chairperson of the State Committee on Statistics in Tajikistan made a concrete proposal to the UN agencies present to undertake such a survey jointly with the Government of Tajikistan after the national census has been carried out in late 2010. At the same time, participants noted that identification of statelessness on an ad-hoc basis and inadequate standing procedures to identify stateless persons in the countries of Central Asia mean that not all cases are identified. Participants agreed that identification Small Changes ‫ ـ‬Big Gains: An Action Plan to Prevent and Reduce Statelessness in the Kyrgyz Republic 10