EVALUATION OF UNHCR-LED INITIATIVES TO END STATELESSNESS – FINAL REPORT – VOLUME I human resources for statelessness in priority contexts. Getting the right staff is also key. A number of interviewees highlighted the added value of national staff focused on the statelessness agenda (for protection and communications functions), given their often-enhanced understanding of the local context and legal environment compared with international staff, their language skills, and, therefore, their ability to liaise more effectively with national government and non-governmental stakeholders. 72. Analysis of job descriptions across UNHCR protection staff functions showed that they generally do include duties related to statelessness. This is unsurprising for roles dedicated to statelessness, but statelessness was also notably prominent in other job descriptions, including Heads of Protection Service within Regional Bureaux; and conspicuously minimal in others, in terms of duties and required work experience, for Senior Protection Officers working in the field, for example, as well as Assistant and Associate Protection Officers. Only job descriptions for the Statelessness Officer and Senior Statelessness Officer have a mandatory requirement for completing the UNHCR statelessness training. The evaluation considers this a missed opportunity in terms of increasing levels of awareness and capacity on statelessness across a broader spectrum of UNHCR’s staff. 73. Despite reported insufficiency of staffing or lack of dedicated staffing reported in survey responses and interviews, analysis of expenditure data by budget category shows that staffing is by far the greatest category of UNHCR statelessness expenditures. Given the predominant focus on advocacy and capacity development activities for statelessness work, this does not seem surprising. However, the evaluation team remains unclear whether the budget category designations in the Focus / MSRP data are an accurate depiction of the investment in human resources as staff budgets may be automatically calculated as a percentage of operational expenditures in a pillar. That said, key informants also stressed that statelessness activities are not particularly reliant on large-scale budgets given the predominant focus on advocacy and capacity development activities are not as cost intensive as other areas of UNHCR’s work. Conversely, some key informants stressed that one obstacle to improving data on statelessness was the lack of investment in systems and staff to help ensure better data quality. Figure 9 shows the percentage of total expenditures by budget category and region for statelessness work from 2012-2019. Figure 9 – Expenditures by UNHCR budget category and region 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Africa Partner Project Americas Asia and the Pacific UNHCR Administration Europe UNHCR Project Mid dle East and North Africa UNHCR Staff 74. The level and cost of investment in human resources within the Statelessness Section in DIP/HQ has fluctuated since 2010, as shown in Figure 10.53 Between 2010 and 2020, the total number of staff within the Section has ranged between three and six people, though this includes a mix of different staff types, grades and assignment durations. From 2010 to 2015 the section had only two fixed term core staff. From 2016 to 2020 the section had three fixed term core staff, all at level P3 and above. Overall, the Statelessness Section has relied heavily on temporary positions and short-term assignments, making it difficult for the team to plan ahead and predictably engage with other parts of the organization and external partners. Scaling down of statelessness capacity within DIP was done as part of an overall HQ alignment with the regionalization process, on the basis that it would be balanced with increased capacity elsewhere, i.e. at regional and country levels. Decreasing (or at best static) levels of dedicated statelessness staff within regions (see Figure 6) indicate that this reconfiguration of statelessness 53 The Statelessness Section was established in 2008 but data on the number of staff and related costs is only available from 2010 onwards. UNHCR / May, 2021 21