84. In general, interviewees were confronted with significant difficulties in accessing the rights attributed to them under the 1954 statelessness convention. This was mainly because they were all either unregistered, registered as being of unknown nationality or of unconfirmed nationality. This is a troubling situation, as classifying stateless persons as being of unknown nationality or by attributing an unproven citizenship pre-empts the activation of rights enshrined in the 1954 Convention.116 One of the interviewees, for example, had variously been attributed as “Russian”, “Georgian”, and as “nationality unknown”, or no citizenship at all. In the first two instances, no verification for this attribution was sought and nationality was unilaterally determined. On this matter De Groot wrote the following: “If the foreign State refuses to recognize the person involved as a national, other States are absolutely not entitled to conclude that the person in question is nevertheless a national of this foreign State. If the person involved does not possess any other nationality, this person is de jure stateless and must enjoy the advantages of statelessness avoiding or reducing provisions.”117 85. While Article 17(2) of the 1954 Convention calls on signatories to “give sympathetic consideration to assimilating the rights of all stateless persons with regard to wage-earning employment to those of nationals”, it was forbidden for nearly all interviewees to earn a living, or even perform voluntary work to keep themselves occupied. Other basic needs, a roof over one’s head in particular, were similarly difficult to access. Various respondents were homeless and scraped a living together on the streets. For those who had found shelter, eviction posed a constant threat. Finally, although education appeared to be available to all minors, the inability to complete an internship obstructed the acquisition of a diploma.118 86. Many of the interviewees complained about the lack of procedural solutions to their plight. Due to the absence of a dedicated statelessness procedure in the Netherlands, stateless people ended up moving from one ill-fitting procedure to another. Although the “no-fault” procedure in theory serves the needs of stateless persons, in practice such permits are rarely granted. Moreover, the “no-fault” procedure can only be accessed after an application for an asylum or regular residence permit has been denied, causing considerable and unnecessary delays. After all, many stateless people do not even wish to apply for asylum and may not in any case be refugees. A statelessness status determination procedure would help clarify those who are indeed stateless. For some interviewees, residence in the Netherlands was not necessarily the aim or viewed as the general optimum solution. Some showed no desire to stay in the Netherlands, either because of a longing to return home or because of profound disillusionment with life in the Netherlands. In these cases actively advocating for and assisting the individual in acquiring or confirming another country’s citizenship or at least re-admittance and enjoyment of a secure status and rights would be more in line with his or her wishes. 87. Even if there had been a more readily accessible procedural solution to statelessness, many of the interviewees would still not have benefited from it. Eight of the respondents had been declared an undesirable alien, mostly for minor offences such as petty theft and posing as someone else to be able to work. This kind of subsistence crime, though not to be condoned, is one consequence of a situation where stateless persons have no right 116  .-R. de Groot, “A clarification of the fundamental rights implications of stateless and persons G erased from the register of residents”, 4. 117 Ibid. 118  n 28 June 2011, in answer to written questions from members of Parliament, the Minister for O Social Affairs stated that he considered it undesirable that children without a residence permit performed internships in the course of their studies. Ref. No. 2011Z09769. in the Netherlands 37