international actors.8 In 2014 the UN Committee against Torture recommended that Estonia “adopt legal and practical measures to simplify and facilitate the naturalization and integration of stateless persons and non-citizens, including by revisiting the requirements for the granting of citizenship”.9 6. The 2015 amendment to the Citizenship Act has also brought about positive change on this issue. Estonian language requirements for elderly applicants for citizenship will be simplified. This is very important as for many, often elderly individuals whose first language is Russian, it was difficult to pass the stringent Estonian language and constitution exams. Nevertheless, the naturalisation requirements for stateless persons remain difficult for some stateless persons to meet. The condition of a permanent legal income may, for instance, pose a particular challenge for many stateless persons and delay their access to nationality in practice. This issue has not been addressed by the most recent amendment and will continue to obstruct access to nationality and thereby the resolution of statelessness. Protection of stateless persons 7. Estonia is one of only four countries in the European Union that is not a party to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. This is the case in spite of the pledge made by the delegation of the European Union to the United Nations in 2012 on behalf of all EU member states that “the EU Member States which have not yet done so pledge to address the issue of statelessness by ratifying the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and by considering the ratification of the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness”.10 Moreover, there is currently no statelessness determination procedure in Estonia, which hinders the state’s ability to ensure protection for stateless persons, especially in the migration context. As a result, there is a gap in terms of the protection of stateless persons on Estonian territory who do not fall within the special regulations made for “persons of undetermined citizenship”. 8. In this respect, it should be noted that despite the near universal ratification by European Union states of the 1954 Statelessness Convention, relatively few states yet have in place dedicated procedures to identify stateless persons on their territories and thereby properly afford them the obligations owing under the Convention or wider international human rights law. This absence contrasts sharply with the existence of 8 One can point out several recent examples. The topic was raised in the recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD): see CERD/C/EST/CO/8-9 (2010), item 15; and CERD/C/EST/CO/1011 (2014), item 11; and in the recommendation of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: E/C.12/EST/CO/2 (2011), item 9. 9 Committee against Torture, Concluding observations on the fifth periodic report of Estonia, adopted by the Committee at its fiftieth session (6-31 May 2013). 10 See: http://www.unrol.org/files/Pledges%20by%20the%20European%20Union.pdf