Too old to be a ‘foundling’? – International standards and comparative analysis – A harmonised interpretation of the term ‘foundling’ contributes to legal certainty and strengthens the integrity and legitimacy of the 1961 Convention and the international human rights protection system in general. Defining a foundling as any minor of unknown parents not only closes the recurrent gaps where many persons of unknown parentage can only be discovered late, when no longer ‘newborn’ or ‘young children’ due to informal adoption, trafficking, displacement, conflict or document loss,157 but also leads to a more structured approach to domestic adjudication and international responsibility sharing. 157 On how the lack of functioning civil registration and loss of documents due to displacement and armed conflict can lead to statelessness in general, see for example Amit Sen and Zahra Albarazi, ‘Efforts to prevent statelessness amongst children displaced by conflict in the Middle East and North Africa’ in Laura van Waas and Melanie Khanna (eds), Solving Statelessness (Wolf Legal Publishers 2017) 412-422. European University Institute 44