Session Type: 90 minutes (Regular session)  

Date: February 28, 2024 [Day 2 - Solidarity]

Proposed Panelists: Hafsar Tameesuddin, Amal de Chickera, Deepa Nambiar, Areej Alshammiry and Martin Dunn

Moderator: Subin Mulmi

Panelists:

• Hafsar Tameesuddin is the Co-Secretary General of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN) and was also the former Chair of APRRN. Hafsar is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Global Movement Against Statelessness
• Amal de Chickera is the Co-Director of ISI and is also a member of the Interim Core Group of the Global Movement.
• Deepa Nambiar is the Director of Partnerships at Asylum Access and was the Founding Director of Asylum Access Malaysia.
• Areej Alshammiry is a Vanier Doctoral Fellow in Sociology, York University, Toronto. Areej is also a member of the Interim Core Group of the Global Movement
• Martin Dunn is a philanthropist, activist, and a strong ally of the statelessness movement.

The World Conference on Statelessness will be held from 26-29 February 2024 at Taylor’s University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Organised by the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI), Nationality for All (NFANFA) and Development of Human Resources for Rural Areas (DHRRA) Malaysia, the conference will bring together 300+ participants with lived and learned experience of statelessness from across the globe to exchange knowledge, perspectives, ideas and skills. The programme will focus on the three themes of SOLIDARITY, KNOWLEDGE and CHANGE, and will be consultatively developed to respond to the interests and needs of the field. By bringing together advocates, activists, academics, artists, community and social leaders, members of the donor community, UN and government representatives, in a safe and equal space, the conference will inspire, inform and invigorate efforts to achieve positive change.

The 2024 World Conference on Statelessness will not be an ordinary conference, but a multi-stakeholder convening that centres people with lived experience of statelessness and offers sessions in a wide variety of formats to facilitate storytelling & peer-learning, reflection & celebration, brainstorming & ideas-testing, and networking & relationship-building. The programme will be designed to:

• Support the efforts of the Global Movement on Statelessness to build a community of civil society actors from around the world, capable of challenging and addressing prevalent power imbalances in the field -> SOLIDARITY💜.
• Celebrate and share the many advances in research, advocacy and other promising practices that have emerged in recent years, unpack emerging challenges to find new pathways and synergies to address statelessness, and explore the politics of knowledge production and consumption within the field -> KNOWLEDGE📚.
• Catalyse meaningful impact in this field over the coming years by forging new and deeper collaborations, exploring innovative and effective strategies, and promoting joined-up action to achieve change -> CHANGE🌸.

We are delighted by the level of interest in helping to shape the conversation at this event: We received over 140 individual, joint and other session proposals, from all around the world!

BACKGROUND

The Conference builds on the 2019 World Conference on Statelessness. The knowledge shared, ideas brainstormed and relationships forged at the 2019 Conference have since inspired and informed many other initiatives to protect the right to nationality and promote the rights of stateless people around the world. Many new challenges and opportunities have emerged since 2019, not least in relation to the global pandemic. It is critical to revive dialogues, deepen relationships, forge new connections and refresh momentum – a need that the next World Conference on Statelessness will answer.