remedies that may be relevant. Section 6 provides a short a discussion of the follow-up to a case to ensure that a final judgment, favourable or unfavourable, is not the end of the matter. Section 7 summarises the status of potential arguments from international law, with links to further resources, including case law. Finally, Section 8 suggests other resources on statelessness and the right to a nationality in international and comparative law that may be useful to litigators, as well as a list of all the cases mentioned in this Guide, grouped by jurisdiction. 2. TERMINOLOGY One of the challenges in litigating statelessness and the right to a nationality is the different possible definitions of the terms used, both at international and at national levels. This section sets out some of the debates and establishes the terminology to be used in this Guide. 2.1. Statelessness A stateless person is defined by the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless persons as a person who is “not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law”.1 UNHCR has adopted extensive guidance on the interpretation of all elements of this definition. In relation to the wording “not considered as a national” the guidance states that: Establishing whether an individual is not considered as a national under the operation of its law requires a careful analysis of how a State applies its nationality laws in an individual’s case in practice and any review/ appeal decisions that may have had an impact on the individual’s status. This is a mixed question of fact and law.2 That is, individuals who are not treated as nationals by the competent authorities of any state—for example who are refused documents recognising their nationality by every state to which they have a relevant link—must be regarded as stateless even if the facts as narrated by the person concerned appear to indicate that they have a claim to nationality (u section 5.1: Issue framing, and u section 7.1: The definition of stateless person and the determination that a person is stateless.) Many refugees are also stateless. Indeed, deprivation and denial of nationality may be an element in the persecution that forces people to flee their country (for a brief discussion u section 7.5: Arbitrary denial or deprivation of nationality and the right to due process, subheading on Arbitrary deprivation of nationality as persecution). However, most stateless people are living in the country of their birth and lifelong residence, what might be described as their ‘own country’.3 UNHCR refers to this group as stateless persons “in situ”. Only a minority of stateless persons are “in a migratory context”, ie, are forcibly displaced or themselves migrants.4 For the former group, the best resolution to their situation will almost always be recognition or acquisition of the nationality of the state of birth and residence. For the latter, the establishment of a statelessness determination procedure, coupled with the issue of an identity document confirming legal residence and access to other rights and services for stateless persons, may be a necessary step to provide protection before the nationality of a new country of residence can be acquired. Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Person, 1954, art 1. This definition is considered to be part of international customary law: see Articles on Diplomatic Protection with commentaries, International Law Commission, 2006, art 8 https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/9_8.shtml. In French: “une personne qu’aucun État ne considère comme son ressortissant par application de sa législation.” Note, however, that the translation of the 1954 Convention into other languages often does not include the term operation/application, suggesting that only “law” is relevant. This includes the Spanish text, which is deemed equally authentic with the English and French: “toda persona que no sea considerada como nacional suyo por ningún Estado, conforme a su legislación.” Litigators in countries using versions of the text which are incorrectly translated who wish to rely on the discussion of the definition in the UNHCR Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons may need to draw attention to these discrepancies. (See also Gabor Gyulai, “Should nationality have a ‘minimum content’? – Italian Supreme Court passes landmark decision” (blog post) European Network on Statelessness, 19 September 2014, https://www.statelessness.eu/updates/blog/shouldnationality-have-minimum-content-italian-supreme-court-passes-landmark-decision.) 1 2 UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons under the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, 2014, para. 23. https://www.refworld. org/policy/legalguidance/unhcr/2014/en/122573. 3 See the discussion of “own country” in UN Human Rights Committee, ‘General Comment No. 27: Article 12 (Freedom of Movement)’, CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.9 (Geneva, 2 November 1999), https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/45139c394.pdf. 4 On this distinction, see Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, supra n 2, paras 1, & 58–59; Caia Vlieks, “Contexts of Statelessness: The Concepts ‘Statelessness in Situ’ and ‘Statelessness in the Migratory Context’” in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds), Understanding Statelessness (Routledge 2017). 14 U N H C R | L I T I G AT I N G T H E R I G H T T O A N AT I O N A L I T Y: A G U I D E F O R P R AC T I T I O N E R S