UNHCR and NFA Regional NGO Consultations on Statelessness 2022
On April 28 and 29, 2022, UNHCR Regional Bureau Asia Pacific and Nationality For All co-organized a Regional Consultation on Statelessness. The event was organized online with 19 CSOs and academic organizations attending. The two-day event included an online networking session and allowed the CSOs to share their work.
On Day 2 of the event, the participants discussed the contribution of regional networks in the global alliance-building process. This was followed by a panel discussion on ‘Strengthening the inclusion, empowerment, fair and meaningful participation of stateless persons’. The panel discussion was live streamed.
The panel included two persons with lived experience of statelessness engaged in advocacy to address statelessness: Khalid Hussain(Council of Minorities) and Deepti Gurung (Citizenship Affected People’s Network Nepal) and two persons with learned experience of working on statelessness: Melinda Sharlini (Family Frontiers) and Saqib Sheikh (Rohingya Project).
After the event, participants were asked to fill out a post-event survey. The survey was filled out by 14 organizations. One of the questions asked was whether they were interested in being a part of a regional coalition of CSOs working on statelessness. 13 of them said yes and with this, the idea of forming a new regional coalition of CSOs in Asia Pacific emanated.