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Kyiv, 25 October 2024: Marking the 10th year anniversary of the UNHCR-led global #IBelong campaign to end statelessness worldwide, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine today hosted a roundtable discussion bringing together experts from international organizations, government officials, and civil society.

The event aimed to showcase achievements, propose solutions, and foster cooperation to create a roadmap for the way forward in Ukraine to address statelessness within the country.

“Being stateless or not having the basic civil and identity documents to prove who you are and your right to citizenship often means that you cannot access services and support in society that the rest of us take for granted and depend on daily. Like schools, hospitals, courts, banks and social services. Ukraine has made tremendous progress over the past decades in preventing and reducing statelessness and to UNHCR stands as a global example for inspiration. Today, we have taken this progress as a steppingstone to explore further ways to address challenges that remain, such as barriers to birth registration for children born in Russian occupied territories of Ukraine. We remain committed to working with the Government of Ukraine, the Office of the Ombudsman and civil society partners to identify practical solutions for reducing risks of statelessness and ensuring that no-one is left behind in the context of Ukraine’s recovery,” said Karolina Lindholm Billing, UNHCR Representative in Ukraine.

“Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Ombudsperson’s Office has