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the enjoyment of political or full socioeconomic rights, including some of the
rights laid down in the 1954 Convention. It is clear, however, that State Parties
to the 1954 Convention enjoy discretion in granting legal residence to stateless
persons, and can set reasonable conditions on access to residence.
A fourth issue with the 1954 Convention is that the catalogue of rights to be
accorded to stateless persons is outdated—and outmatched by human rights
treaties of general character, such as the ICCPR, the ICESCR and the ECHR.
The construction used in the Convention to incrementally increase the level of
rights based on the legal bond of the stateless person with the State runs counter to the basic tenet in human rights treaties and doctrine that fundamental
rights are inherent in every human being regardless of legal or personal status.
The same applies to the Convention equating the required level of treatment
to that of either nationals or aliens generally. For example, the 1954 Convention
requires freedom of religion and the right to education to be granted to stateless persons on par with nationals (Arts. 4 and 22); and the freedom of association is to be guaranteed on par with aliens generally (Art. 15). In some respects,
the rights of the 1954 Convention remain salient however, especially those
rights which see specifically to the experience of stateless persons and which
cannot be found in other treaties, such as the provision on personal status
(Art. 12), the right to administrative assistance (Art. 25), the right to identity
papers (Art. 27) and the right to travel documents (Art. 28).
Fifth, and finally, there are gaps in the treaty-based supervision framework.
Contrary to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the 1954 Convention contains no
provision on a supervisory body.31 In the 1961 Convention, Article 11 refers to
the establishment of ‘a body to which a person claiming the benefit of this
Convention may apply for the examination of his claim and for assistance in
presenting it to the appropriate authority’. The inclusion of this provision was
deemed important, for stateless persons would normally not be able to count
on a State to take up their cause in their relation with other States and they
would not have the financial resources or expertise to bring legal actions on
their right to be granted the nationality of a State.32 A proposal to also set up a
tribunal which would be competent to decide any disputes between parties
as well as to hear complaints presented by the agency on behalf of stateless
31 Cf. Art. 35 Refugee Convention. It appears that the matter of creating a supervisory body
for stateless persons was for procedural reasons and for failure to raise the issue, never
discussed during the Convention’s drafting: Batchelor, C.A., ‘Stateless Persons: Some Gaps
in International Protection’, 7 International Journal of Refugee Law (1995) 232ff at 247.
32
Ibid., at 254–256.
European Journal of Migration and Law 19 (2017) 101–135