YALE HUMAN RIGHTS & DEVELOPMENT L.J. 2017] The Risk of Statelessness VOL. XIX 81 should as far as possible be treated as stateless de jure to enable them to acquire effective nationality.”232 This suggested that states could—but were not required to—develop rules on nationality acquisition and deprivation that would reduce the likelihood that persons would become de facto stateless.233 In the context of the Final Act of the 1961 Convention, de facto statelessness appeared to have taken on a different meaning than de facto statelessness in the Final Act of the 1954 Convention. While no definition was provided, commentary by the UNHCR at the Conference suggested that de facto statelessness meant ineffective nationality, or that one had a nationality link but did not enjoy all of the rights associated with citizenship.234 Even so, there was some recognition of the difficulty in distinguishing between de jure and de facto statelessness. Paul Weis, who represented the UNHCR at the Conference, highlighted the existence of “many cases where a person’s nationality status cannot be established, where it is doubtful, undetermined or unknown,” making the distinction between legal and factual statelessness “difficult to draw.”235 Indeed, while some cases of statelessness are clear, namely where there is simply no domestic nationality law regime that could be interpreted to extend nationality to an individual, there are other cases in which a determination of legal versus factual statelessness requires closer examination. Laura van Waas has surveyed the many uses of de facto statelessness, and suggested that this term is generally used to describe one of three situations: 1) where a person is generally deprived of the rights associated with nationality, 2) “where a person’s nationality is contested or disputed,” and 3) where a person is “unable to . . . prove his or her nationality.”236 Van Waas notes that the first category has historically been referred to as “ineffective nationality,” which she defines as “not enjoy[ing] the rights of citizenship enjoyed by other non-criminal citizens of the same state.”237 Van Waas suggests that this category of de facto statelessness is amorphous, inasmuch as it could reasonably encompass anyone whose human rights have been violated, and argues that the human rights machinery is better suited to address issues of ineffective nationality.238 232. Id. (quoting U.N. Conference on the Elimination or Reduction of Future Statelessness, Final Act of the United Nations Conference on the Elimination or Reduction of Future Statelessness, Res. 1, A/CONF.9/14/Add.l (Aug. 29, 1961)). 233. Id. 234. Id. at 24. 235. Statement by Paul Weis to the United Nations Conference on the Elimination or Reduction of Future Statelessness (Aug. 25, 1961) (as quoted in Carol A. Batchelor, Stateless Persons: Some Gaps in International Protection, 7 INT’L J. REFUGEE L. 232, 252 (1995)); see also U.N. Conference on the Elimination or Reduction of Future Statelessness, Summary Record of the Twenty-Third Plenary Meeting: Held at Headquarters, New York on Friday, 25 August 1961, at 10:30 a.m., A/CONF.9/SR.23, at 13-14 (Oct. 11, 1961) (summarizing the statement by Paul Weis). 236. VAN WAAS, supra note 80, at 24. 237. Id. 238. Id. at 24-25. This position, set forth by van Waas, is also supported by Hugh Massey, Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3111529