Advancing systemic change for nationality rights, inclusion, and accountability
NFA works to advance legal, policy, and systems change to address statelessness and nationality deprivation across the Asia-Pacific region. Our advocacy is grounded in evidence, informed by lived experience, and strengthened through partnerships with impacted communities, civil society organizations, coalitions, and international allies. We engage across national, regional, and global spaces to influence laws, policies, and governance systems that shape access to nationality, legal identity, and protection.
National Advocacy and Legal Reform
NFA supports community-rooted and impacted-person-led advocacy efforts to advance legal and policy reform in national contexts. This includes strengthening advocacy strategies, supporting engagement with governments and policymakers, contributing legal and policy analysis, and accompanying partners through reform processes.
Our work has supported advocacy on gender-equal nationality rights, protection of stateless communities, access to documentation, and responses to discrimination and exclusion in countries including Nepal, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, and beyond.
UN and International Human Rights Advocacy
NFA engages with international human rights mechanisms to strengthen accountability and elevate nationality rights within global human rights frameworks. This includes treaty body engagement, Universal Periodic Review submissions, advocacy with UN special procedures, and joint international statements.
Over the years, NFA has contributed to multiple submissions across the Asia-Pacific region, including CEDAW, CRC, and UPR processes, helping ensure that statelessness, gender discrimination in nationality laws, detention, forced displacement, and barriers to legal identity remain visible within international accountability spaces.
Regional Policy Engagement
NFA works to ensure that statelessness and nationality rights are reflected in broader regional policy processes, including those not traditionally focused on statelessness. This includes engagement on civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS), legal identity, migration, digital governance, and regional human rights processes.
Our advocacy increasingly focuses on how systems intended to promote inclusion, such as civil registration and digital identity infrastructure, can also reinforce exclusion when stateless and undocumented communities are overlooked. Through regional engagement, NFA works to influence these conversations toward more inclusive, rights-based outcomes.
Strategic Litigation and Legal Advocacy
NFA recognizes strategic litigation as an important tool for advancing systemic change when used alongside broader advocacy and movement-building efforts. While NFA does not directly litigate, we support partners and allies working on legal advocacy, litigation strategy, and accountability efforts that challenge discriminatory laws and exclusionary practices.
This includes supporting legal reform efforts on nationality rights, contributing to strategic litigation conversations, and strengthening collaboration between advocacy and legal actors in the region.
Advocacy Through Coalitions and Collective Action
NFA believes advocacy is stronger when it is collaborative. We work through regional and global coalitions to strengthen collective advocacy, amplify community priorities, and build coordinated responses to systemic exclusion.
This includes coalition advocacy through platforms such as APRRN, the Human Rights for Digital Identity Coalition, the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, the Global Movement Against Statelessness, and regional CRVS processes. Through these spaces, NFA helps connect local realities to broader policy influence.
Our Advocacy Approach
Our advocacy is shaped by a few core principles:
- centering lived experience and community leadership
- combining evidence with practical advocacy
- working across local, regional, and global levels
- building long-term partnerships rather than one-off interventions
- linking nationality rights to adjacent systems including legal identity, migration, gender equality, and digital governance
- prioritizing collaboration over institutional visibility
