The #IBelong Campaign was launched by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on 4 November 2014 with the stated goal of ending statelessness by 2024. At launch, UNHCR estimated that millions of people worldwide lacked any nationality, leaving them unable to access education, healthcare, employment, travel documents, or formal civil status.
The campaign was built around a Global Action Plan to End Statelessness (2014–2024) containing ten actions, including:
- Resolving existing major situations of statelessness
- Ensuring no child is born stateless
- Removing gender discrimination from nationality laws
- Preventing denial, loss, or deprivation of nationality on discriminatory grounds
- Granting protection status to stateless migrants and facilitating their naturalization
- Improving birth registration and the issuance of nationality documentation
- Acceding to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness
- Improving quantitative and qualitative data on stateless populations
The campaign featured an Open Letter to End Statelessness signed by public figures, jurists, and former heads of state, and encouraged states to make pledges at high-level segments, notably the 2019 High-Level Segment on Statelessness in Geneva, where governments and other actors made over 350 pledges.
Concrete results during the campaign included Kyrgyzstan announcing in 2019 that it had resolved all known cases of statelessness on its territory, and accessions to the two statelessness conventions by states including Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Iceland, and others. Several countries, such as Sierra Leone, Madagascar, and Liberia, reformed nationality laws to remove gender discrimination.
The ten-year campaign concluded in 2024 and was succeeded by the Global Alliance to End Statelessness, a multi-stakeholder platform launched by UNHCR in October 2024 to continue the work beyond the campaign's horizon. Statelessness has not been eliminated, but the campaign substantially raised the issue's political profile.
Example
In 2019, Kyrgyzstan announced under the #IBelong Campaign that it had resolved the cases of more than 13,700 stateless persons identified on its territory, becoming the first country to do so.
Frequently asked questions
It was launched on 4 November 2014 and concluded in 2024, a ten-year horizon set by UNHCR's Global Action Plan to End Statelessness.
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