THE RISK OF STATELESSNESS 48 2017 YALE HUMAN RIGHTS & DEVELOPMENT L.J. [Vol. 19 unprotected under the international law of statelessness. It argues for the continued use of legal statelessness as the definitive trigger for statelessness protection and for the establishment of a standard of proof that will permit a determination of statelessness for persons who have disputed or unresolved nationality claims. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 48 I. THE HUMAN RIGHT TO NATIONALITY AND STATELESSNESS PROTECTION ........................................................................................................... 53 A. The Evolution of Nationality as an Individual Right .................. 54 B. International Protection for Stateless Persons .............................. 58 II. THE EMERGENCE OF THE “RISK OF STATELESSNESS” DOCTRINE IN HISPANIOLA ............................................................................................................ 62 A. Nationality Rights and Statelessness in Hispaniola ..................... 63 B. A Clash Over the Meaning of Statelessness .................................. 67 C. Expelled Dominicans and Haitians vs. Dominican Republic ............. 72 III. CONSIDERING RISK WITHIN THE STATELESSNESS DETERMINATION PROCESS .................................................................................................................. 78 A. Avoiding the De Facto Statelessness Dilemma ............................ 79 B. Returning to the Statelessness Determination .............................. 83 C. A Role for the Risk of Statelessness ................................................ 88 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 92 INTRODUCTION Events in recent years have revealed large numbers of people who have no nationality anywhere in the world and who suffer myriad violations of their human rights as a result of this acute vulnerability. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are at least ten million stateless persons globally,1 and efforts to map 1. U.N. High Comm’r for Refugees [UNHCR], What Does It Mean To Be Stateless?, http://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/what-does-it-mean-to-be-stateless [https://perma.cc/PKF58T7A]. To confront this challenge, in 2014, UNHCR launched a campaign to eradicate statelessness within ten years. See UNHCR, A Campaign to End Statelessness: Launched on the 60th Anniversary of the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons 1 (Feb. 2014), http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/53174df39.pdf [https://perma.cc/SC6W-6EMY]. Electroniccopy copyavailable available at: at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3111529 Electronic https://ssrn.com/abstract=3111529