358 GEORGETOWN IMMIGRATION LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 29:351 similarly vigorous protection effort. Nevertheless, by the end of 2014, only eighty-four countries had ratified the Statelessness Convention.25 While this indicates less concern for the stateless population on the international level, roughly a quarter of those ratifications have occurred in the previous five years, which serves as evidence of increasing concern.26 A dozen countries, including France, Spain, Italy, Hungary, the United Kingdom, Mexico and the Philippines, have established national mechanisms for the protection of stateless persons.27 The UNHCR has recently initiated a ten-year campaign to end statelessness, which may build on current momentum to identify and protect this vulnerable population.28 Recent efforts by some legislators in the United States to provide protection to stateless persons should be understood in the context of these global trends in international protection. The United States did not sign the Refugee Convention or the Statelessness Convention in the post-war era. However, as part of the global recognition of the persistent need for refugee protection, the United States did sign the 1967 Protocol to the Refugee Convention. In so doing, the United States took on the international obligation to protect persons fleeing persecution, without the temporal or geographic limitations of the Refugee Convention.29 The U.S. Congress later implemented these international obligations in the form of the 1980 Refugee Act, which established the regime for asylum under U.S. law.30 In ratifying the international obligations of the Refugee Convention and establishing a national protection mechanism for asylum seekers, the United States joined a global community that recognized the need to address the needs of refugees on a global scale. While the United States has been paying increasing attention to the global problem of statelessness, there is no indication that it intends to ratify the Statelessness Convention. The United States participated in the Ministerial and Intergovernmental Event on Refugees and Stateless Persons at the United Nations in December 2011 to commemorate the anniversaries of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.31 At that meeting, sixty-one countries made a variety of 25. See Statelessness Convention, supra note 15. 26. See Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, U.N. TREATY COLLECTION, https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetailsII.aspx?src⫽TREATY&mtdsg_no⫽V-3&chapter⫽5&Temp⫽ mtdsg2&lang⫽en (last visited Jan. 22, 2016). 27. See EUROPEAN NETWORK ON STATELESSNESS, STATELESSNESS DETERMINATION AND THE PROTECTION STATUS OF STATELESS PERSONS 7 (2013), available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/53162a2f4. html. 28. UNHCR Launches 10-year Global Campaign to End Statelessness, UNHCR (Nov. 4, 2014), http://www.unhcr.org/545797f06.html. 29. Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, Jan. 31 1967, available at http://www.refworld. org/docid/3ae6b3ae4.html. 30. Refugee Act of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96-212, 94 Stat. 102 (1980); see also 8 U.S.C. § 1158. 31. See State Action on Statelessness, UNHCR, http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4ff2bdff6.html (last visisted Jan. 21, 2016). Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2796321