Niger Officially Launches Global Alliance to End Statelessness

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency and Niger authorities today officially launched the Global Alliance to End Statelessness in the West African country. Launched globally in October 2024, this multi-stakeholder initiative brings together governments, United Nations agencies, civil society, regional organizations, and stateless-led groups. It builds on the #IBelong campaign and promotes inclusion, accountability, and access to legal identity.

In Niger, the Alliance will serve as a catalyst to accelerate national reforms and expand access to civil and nationality documents, thereby helping to prevent the risks associated with statelessness. It will also strengthen institutional coordination between State agencies, civil society, and development partners to enhance protection and improve service delivery.

“This Alliance reflects Niger’s unwavering commitment to protect the right to a nationality for all,” said Mr. Alio Daouda, Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Keeper of the Seals, in charge of Relations with the Institutions. “Over the past decade, we have undertaken bold reforms, brought documentation to the most remote communities and taken concrete steps to prevent statelessness. Today, we reaffirm our determination to build a Niger where every person is counted, protected, and fully recognized by the State, as part of our broader process of national refoundation.”

At the community level, the initiative will work to strengthen people’s capacity to understand, claim, and exercise their fundamental rights, including access to education, health care, employment, property, and freedom of movement. It will also amplify the voices of those most at risk of statelessness, particularly in rural, isolated, and border areas where access to documentation remains a major challenge.

While no stateless population has been formally identified in Niger to date, thousands of people remain at risk. This includes individuals living in displacement-affected areas, cross-border regions, or underserved localities by civil status and nationality services, who therefore lack birth certificates, identity papers, or formal proof of nationality.

The urgency of addressing these challenges became evident in 2014, when a study carried out in Diffa, now the symbolic launch site of the Alliance, revealed that 82 per cent of forcibly displaced persons from Nigeria possessed no civil documentation, placing them at high risk of statelessness. These findings marked a turning point, spurring Niger’s commitment to expanding civil registration and ensuring access to legal identity for all.

Since then, Niger has taken concrete and sustained action, with progress accelerating over the past six years, with support from UNHCR. Since 2019, more than 141,900 judicial declarations have been issued through late birth registration procedures. Over 24,600 birth certificates have been delivered via the regular civil registration system, including 9,700 for refugee children and 14,900 for internally displaced children. In addition, 4,616 nationality certificates and 2,700 national identity cards have been issued specifically for displaced populations. More than 538,700 people have been reached through community campaigns, media outreach, and awareness-raising sessions.

The creation of statelessness working groups in six regions has strengthened local coordination, enabling authorities and partners to identify risks in a timely manner, harmonize responses, and bring documentation services closer to communities in need.

“Niger has demonstrated a strong and consistent commitment to ensuring that everyone has a legal identity,” said Olivier Fafa Attidzah, UNHCR Representative in Niger. “From legislative reforms to large-scale civil registration campaigns, the country has taken major steps to expand access to documentation for those most vulnerable to statelessness. Through this Alliance, we will strengthen existing good practices and ensure that no one is left behind.”

For many Nigerien families, this progress has had a direct and lasting impact.

“It’s a thorn removed from the parents’ side,” said Hassane Adamou, whose 13-year-old son, Abdoul Kabir, a primary school pupil in Niamey, recently received his birth certificate thanks to a facilitation operation organized under the national civil registration efforts with UNHCR support. “This will allow our children to continue their studies and choose their educational paths, because these documents are required at school.”

The launch in Diffa, a region that hosts a third of the 940,000 forcibly displaced persons in Niger and disproportionately affected by documentation gaps, underscores the country’s commitment to include refugees, returnees, internally displaced persons, and host communities in the Alliance’s activities. Planned actions include high-level consultations, community awareness-raising, legislative adjustments, strengthening of nationality and civil status services, and public campaigns on the right to a nationality.

The authorities of Niger and UNHCR call on all stakeholders, including national institutions, local authorities, civil society, development partners and affected communities, to join the Global Alliance and seize this historic opportunity to make statelessness a thing of the past.

No one should be invisible. Everyone has the right to exist.