living in the country’s Amazon region (U.S. Department of State 2008b). An estimated 4,000 Haitian immigrants entered the country, making their way through Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia via the Dominican Republic and Panama in hope of securing employment in one of the large infrastructure projects (U.S. Department of State 2011c). Effective statelessness can occur when displaced persons are neither recognized as refugees nor assisted by their home country’s consulates where they are located. The number of asylum and refugee claims recognized by Brazil and other countries lags behind the number of applicants, sometimes substantially. In Bolivia, for example, UNHCR reported in 2008 a recognized refugee population of more than six hundred persons that was “steadily increasing.” But in that year the government completed processing and agreed to provide refugee protection in only thirty cases, with older cases still under review and new applications yet to be considered (U.S. Department of State 2008a). While these persons wait, many of them have no proof of citizenship from their country of origin and no formal status where they are. Ecuador and Costa Rica present starker numbers. The Ecuadorian government received nearly eight thousand applications for refugee status in the first nine months of 2008 alone, adding to a backlog of several thousand pending cases. Both UNHCR and the Ecuadorian government reported difficulty in dealing with the number of applications. In 2011, UNHCR estimated that there were more than 55,000 recognized refugees in Ecuador. An additional 133,000 persons were “in need of international protection,” 92 percent of whom were thought to be Colombians. Various nongovernmental organizations reported that the Civil Registry did not always cooperate in registering refugee children or registering children of refugees born in the country, despite legal requirements to do so 9 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3150558