confidentiality of the refugee or asylum seekers must be ensured. As such, in some instances it will not be possible to contact the state of previous habitual residence to request confirmation of citizenship or statelessness. As of yet UNHCR has only provided very limited guidance on the identification of the statelessness of refugees. The need to do so is obscured by the claim of the primacy of international refugee law to provide sufficient protection and solutions for stateless refugees. This lack of guidance has consequences given the need to identify the statelessness of refugees to ensure states do not contravene the 1951 Convention provisions on the cessation of refugee status. As will be shown in the analysis of Denmark and Sweden (both of whom are party to the 1951 Convention4 and the 1954 Convention), such guidance is required to avoid situations of indefinite statelessness for refugees. Stateless Refugees in Denmark and Sweden Neither Denmark or Sweden have adopted a definition of statelessness within their national legislation. However, given that the 1954 Convention does not permit reservations to the definition in Article 1(1), the definition is seen as binding on all state parties to the Convention (UNHCR 2012). Therefore, for the purposes of this paper, the definition of a stateless person will be that under the 1954 Convention, to which both Denmark and Sweden are bound, namely, “... a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law” (UN General Assembly, 1954, Art.1.1). The lack of law and policy on determining statelessness in both states makes challenging to know with absolute certainty if those recorded as stateless actually are so, as well as the possibility that some stateless people may not have been recognised as such. For this reason, other nationality categorisations are included in this analysis, such as people whose nationality was ‘not stated’, Uoplyst, in Denmark, or those with ‘unknown citizenship’ Okänt medborgarskap or ‘citizenship under investigation’ Under utredning in Sweden, as well as Palestinians in both states. The definition of a refugee, will be that as established under the Part 1(7.1) of the Danish Aliens Act (Government of Denmark, 2013) and Chapter 4(1) of the Swedish Aliens Act (Regeringskansliet, 2010). Both these definitions in the national legislation acknowledge the possibility of a refugee being stateless.5 4 Denmark has a reservation to Article 17 para 1. However, this article is not of relevance to this analysis. 5 Demark considers a refugee those who fall under the 1951 Convention definition and Sweden notes in Chapter 4(1) of the Aliens Act: “A stateless alien shall also be considered a refugee if he or she - is, for the same reasons that are specified in the first paragraph, outside the country in