On October 7, 2019 the delegation of the Kyrgyz Republic leading by the  Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic Mr. Chingiz Aidarbekov participated in the High-level meeting on statelessness on the margins of the 70th session of the Executive Committee of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (EC UNHCR) in Geneva. At the beginning of the event, the UNHCR High Commissioner Filippo Grandi made a statement before the audience and noted that Kyrgyzstan is the first country in the world to completely solve the problem of statelessness.

Then the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic Mr. Chingiz Aidarbekov made a statement on the achievements of Kyrgyzstan in the fight against statelessness. In his speech, Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Mr.Aidarbekov stated that Kyrgyzstan attaches particular importance to the problems of refugees, internally displaced persons and stateless persons and implements systematic and continuous policy in this area, based on the concept of human rights. Minister Mr. Chingiz Aidarbekov also informed participants that Kyrgyzstan had achieved tremendous and unique results in the issue of statelessness and is the first country in the world to get rid of statelessness.

The Minister Mr.Chingiz Aidarbekov noted that the main responsibility in this area lies with the states themselves, which set the rules for granting, changing or depriving of citizenship. He also drew attention to the importance of making more efforts to resolve the legal status of people living in statelessness for long period of time, as this phenomenon runs counter to the basic human rights norms and standards.

The Foreign Minister also committed that Kyrgyzstan would continue to consistently and actively work in this direction.

The Minister Mr. Chingiz Aidarbekov noted that as part of the UNHCR # IBelong campaign, launched in 2014, Kyrgyzstan identified 13,700 people, including 2,000 children who were stateless. As part of the implementation of the Global Plan of Action for the Elimination of Statelessness for the period 2014-2024, with the support of the UNHCR, and with the participation of the non-governmental sector and local authorities, Kyrgyzstan implemented the pilot projects to identify and document stateless and undocumented persons in the country. As a result of the work carried out, over the past five years, the number of stateless people in Kyrgyzstan has decreased from 13 thousand to zero.