Millions of people around the world are living without a nationality including internatioal adoptees in the United States. 

In 2013, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees called for all nations to address statelessness. “The Global Action Plan to End Statelessness” established a framework with 10 actions for ending world statelessness over the course of 10 years. The UN initiative particularly focuses on preventing and remediating childhood statelessness. As the leaders of ARC have all experienced, the lack of nationality status and citizenship benefits profoundly affects one’s ability to survive let alone dream for the future. According to the UN, “Preventing and ending childhood statelessness is the best way to stop the spread of the problem”.

The Coalition aims to raise awareness and cooperation from state governments on the need to take meaningful actions to ensure that no child grows up without nationality status. Activities of the Coalition include taking on the following activities:

• Ensure that no child is born stateless
• Eliminate laws and practices that deny children nationality on discriminatory grounds
• Remove gender discrimination from nationality laws
• Improve birth registration to prevent statelessness
• Encourage States to accede to the UN Statelessness Conventions