Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration Vol. 7 No. 2 person5 can be returned to their country of previous habitual residence.6 If return is not possible due to the lack of issuance of permanent residence and granting of a full range of rights by the country of former habitual residence, UNHCR recommend that, following the object and the purpose of the 1954 Convention, states grant residency permits to stateless people based solely on their statelessness (ibid). Thus, even for those stateless refugees whose refugee status ceases in contravention of the 1951 Convention cessation provisions, a residency permit should be issued based on their statelessness alone. I should also briefly refer to European Union (EU) law on the obligation to identify statelessness. The need to have identified the statelessness of refugees can be found within the laws of the Common European Asylum System (Spider, 2014).7 Vlieks (2014) makes an argument that the European Convention on Human Rights also obliges states to identify statelessness by drawing on the available case law. Despite these implied requirements, in reality, as Ermolaeva et al. (2017: 12) set out in their detailed analysis in The Concept of ‘Stateless Persons’ in European Union Law, ‘[w]hile the EU does refer to stateless persons in its legal instruments, it has a “very limited” involvement in effectively addressing the issue of statelessness’. Defining Stateless Refugees in Sweden As mentioned previously, Sweden has not adopted a definition of a stateless person within its national legislation. Nonetheless, given that the 1954 Convention does not permit reservations to the definition in Article 1(1), the definition is seen as binding on state parties (UNHCR, 2012). Therefore, for the purposes of this paper, the definition of a stateless person will be that of the 1954 Convention (UN General Assembly, 1954). The definition of a refugee will be that established under Chapter 4(1) of the Swedish Aliens Act (Regeringskansliet, 2010), which is in line with Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention (UN General Assembly, 1951). 8 Similar to the 1951 Convention, the definition in the Swedish Aliens Act also acknowledges the possibility of a refugee being stateless (ibid). 5 This differs if the individual is stateless as a result of voluntary renunciation of nationality as a matter of convenience or choice. 6 UNHCR (2014: 55) note: ‘As for an individual’s ability to return to a country of previous habitual residence, this must be accompanied by the opportunity to live a life of security and dignity in conformity with the object and purpose of the 1954 Convention. Thus, this exception only applies to those individuals who already enjoy the status of permanent residence in another country, or would be granted it upon arrival, where this is accompanied by a full range of civil, economic, social and cultural rights, and where there is a reasonable prospect of obtaining nationality of that State. Permission to return to another country on a short-term basis would not suffice.’ 7 For example, Article 36 of the Directive 2013/32/EU of 26 June 2013 On common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protection notes: ‘1. A third country designated as a safe country of origin in accordance with this Directive may, after an individual examination of the application, be considered as a safe country of origin for a particular applicant only if: (a) he or she has the nationality of that country; or (b) he or she is a stateless person and was formerly habitually resident in that country…’. 8 For the purposes of this analysis those who have been granted “Convention” status as refugees, as well as those who have been granted temporary protection status, following Sweden’s legislative change in 2016, are to be included. However, those who have been granted protection on humanitarian grounds are not included as the focus of this article is on those people who are both refugees and stateless under international law. This distinction has been made for analytical purposes. It should not be read that stateless people who have been granted protection on humanitarian grounds do not face similar problems in having their statelessness accurately assessed, recorded or in finding solutions to their statelessness in Sweden. 24