Brazil Plan of Action – One year of Implementation

Eradicating statelessness

Latin America and the Caribbean were the first regions to endorse UNHCR's call to end global statelessness within ten years. The participating countries of the Brazil Plan of Action are committed to achieve this goal by 2024.

2014-2015 Progress

Accession to the international statelessness instruments

Since December 2014, El Salvador acceded to the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons, and Belize and Peru acceded to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Protecting stateless people and reducing statelessness

In Colombia, the Government issued Circular 059, which establishes that all children born to aliens on Colombian territory should be registered, regardless of whether they are permanent residents or not, and thereby facilitating their access to Colombian nationality.

Chiriticos, a project undertaken in Costa Rica in an alliance with the Registrar's Office of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, UNICEF and UNHCR, obtained significant results. The project aims to identify Ngöbe Buglés indigenous children and youth born in Costa Rica to Panamanian parents who were not registered at birth and assist them with late birth registration and documentation procedures. In just one year, the project assisted 3,000 persons and identified another 7,000 Ngöbe Buglés whose nationality has not yet been determined. In view of this need, the Tribunal requested the extension of the project to also include the northern border to benefit children born in Costa Rica to Nicaraguan parents and who may be in a similar situation. A major step towards the eradication of statelessness was also undertaken in Brazil with the passing of Decree 8.501 in August, which, through promulgation of an earlier Decree, approved Brazil's accession to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

In Peru, a new Migration Supreme Decree was adopted in October 2015, providing safeguards for stateless people residing in the country. In Uruguay, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reviewed a draft law for the protection of stateless people and is expected to submit the law to Parliament before the end of 2015.

In June 2015, UNHCR, the Center for Justice and International Law, and the Open Society Justice Initiative organized the first regional meeting of the Americas Network on Nationality and Statelessness in San José, Costa Rica. Over 30 representatives from non-governmental organizations discussed common challenges related to preventing and responding to statelessness, particularly in the context of operationalizing UNHCR's Global Action Plan to End Statelessness 2014-2024 and the Brazil Plan of Action.