Collective Victimisation Of Stateless Peoples 291 UN systematically refrains from speaking of ‘victims’ in relation to stateless peoples? To provide a discursive explanation, this might be attributed to the associations attached to the victim label. As Lacau notes: ‘(…) naming is not just the pure nominalistic game of attributing an empty name to a preconstituted subject. It is the discursive construction of the subject itself.’18 Consequently, when one refers to a ‘victim’ one sends certain unspoken sociopolitical messages that have become inherited in the term. Ideal victims are often labelled as persons who suffered passively, are weaker than the offender, have no voice, are vulnerable, distressed, innocent, helpless and needy.19 The reference to a ‘victim’ invokes an appeal to empathy and compassion. Meredith comprehensively demonstrates that one should be cautious to grant such compassion and first embed the usage of the term ‘victim’ in the respective socio-political context. Discourses on ‘victimhood’ might for instance be ‘instrumentalised’ in the public space.20 Meredith refers to state leaders who emphasise collective victimhood of their nation in public speeches, to legitimise certain policies related to the national interest that might in fact be hostile to other national groups.21 A straight-forward example of a state that frequently applies this technique is the State of Israel, which justifies militarisation on the basis of self-defence relating to its own victimhood as a Jewish state under continuous threat of hostile Arab neighbor states. In these cases, determining which party is truly the victimised one, deserving of compassion, is complex and highly dependent on the dominant national narrative and people’s individual ideas of right and wrong, good and bad. That being said, how could one explain the absence of referring to stateless persons as victims at any point in the Conventions concerning statelessness? Did the states that drafted the Conventions not consider stateless people ‘deserving’ of victim status? Were the drafters of the Conventions afraid for unintended political statements they might make by including the word ‘victim’ in the Conventions? We opt for the latter. By refraining from terming stateless persons ‘victims’, the United Nations remained neutral as to whether stateless persons were deserving of international compassion or not. Apart 18 19 20 21 <http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html> accessed 28 March 2013. Scanning the Convention, the Protocol and the Introductory Note on the term ‘victim’ or ‘victims’ yields zero results. E. Laclau, ‘Preface’ in S. Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (Verso 1989) xiv. J.J.M. Van Dijk, ‘Free the Victim: A Critique of the Western Conception of Victimhood’ (2009) 16 International Review of Victimology 1. V.M. Meredith, ‘Victim Identity and Respect for Human Dignity: A Terminological Analysis’ (2009) 91 International Review of the Red Cross 259. Ibid. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 285-293