GENEVA — The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR and United Colors of Benetton have partnered to launch today the global “I Belong” campaign, which seeks to end by 2024 the problems faced by more than 10 million people worldwide who lack any nationality.
“We’re very happy to have Benetton’s strong support and cooperation in putting together the graphics and designing the creative content of the Web site that will host the campaign,” Antonio Guterres, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said.
Famous personalities who experienced statelessness, UNHCR said, include Albert Einstein (from 1896 to 1901), Marc Chagall, who fled occupied Europe to the U.S. in 1941, Igor Stravinsky, who became stateless in 1921, and cellist, conductor and political activist Mstislav Rostropovich, who was stateless form 1978 to 1990.
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“Now we are working on taking the campaign all around the world,” said Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal.
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Benetton and UNHCR said the Italian fashion firm’s “I belong” creative campaign “gives a face and a voice to the world’s stateless invisible people” and noted the visual products developed by Fabrica — the communications research center of the Benetton group — “will galvanize the general public,” helping the global agency reach 10 million supporters in 10 years to end the problem.
The strong visuals of the campaign and an online call to action that asks the public to sign an open letter to end statelessness “form the backbone of this ambitious effort,” the joint statement said.
In a bid to advance the push to end the inhumane status, Guterres and more than 20 celebrities — including UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie, UNHCR goodwill ambassador Barbara Hendricks, and Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights activist and Nobel Peace Laureate — published an open letter saying 60 years after the U.N. agreed to protect stateless people, “Now it’s time to end statelessness itself.”
“The main reason people are stateless is because of discrimination. Because of their ethnicity. Because of their religion. Because in some countries, women cannot pass their nationality on to their children. We believe it’s time to end this injustice,” the letter notes.
People not given any nationality include 800,000 Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar; tens of thousands of Dominicans, the vast majority of Haitian descent; Hill Tribes in Thailand; Kurds in Syria; Bedouins in Gulf countries, and noncitizens in Latvia, many of whom lost their status with the breakup of the former Soviet Union, said Mark Manley, UNHCR senior legal coordinator (Statelessness).