. Identification re ention and reduction o state essness the campaign one of Europe´s largest campaigns to address statelessness since the turn of the century. According to UNHCR, political will was a fundamental aspect that contributed to the success of this project, which provides a good practice that can be replicated in other situations. As part of its #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness by 2024, UNHCR helped arrange a study visit by Armenian officials and NGO representatives to learn from Moldova’s success story. See UNHCR web story, How small Moldova ran one of Europe´s largest campaigns to prevent and address statelessness, available at: http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/2674/ Accession to the UN Statelessness Conventions Until 1995, when the UN General Assembly requested that UNHCR actively promote accessions92, no international agency had been doing so with regard to the Statelessness Conventions. As a result, and despite their importance, they have attracted far fewer States Parties than many other treaties related to human rights. Some States have been reticent to accede because of misconceptions about the nature of the obligations imposed by the Conventions, such as the belief that they impose onerous reporting requirements (in fact, there are no reporting requirements under the 1961 Convention and minimal requirements under the 1954 Convention).93 As statelessness is an area regulated by international law in which commonly agreed standards are particularly important, the UN General Assembly94 and the UNHCR Executive Committee95 have continued to encourage States to consider acceding to the 1954 and the 1961 Conventions over the past decade. Recent years have seen a significant forward momentum on this issue. Since 2011, when UNHCR launched a campaign to increase accessions to the Statelessness Conventions, an additional 24 States acceded the 1954 Convention and 31 more States acceded the 1961 Convention worldwide.96 As of October 2016, of the 57 OSCE participating States, 40 are States Parties to the 1954 Convention and 33 to the 1961 Convention. Among those OSCE participating States that acceded to one or both Conventions in the past five years are: Turkey (2015), Italy (2015), Belgium (2014), 66

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