Moreoever, the problems that the recommendation in the Statelessness Conference’s Final Act were seeking to address are more comprehensively dealt with under the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol than under the 1954 Convention, given that the former two instruments provide a greater degree of protection to refugees than the latter instrument does to stateless persons.73 It follows that the recommendation is of no practical relevance today unless it can be argued that there is a category of persons other than refugees who could be considered to have valid reasons for renouncing the protection of the State of their nationality which would justify them being treated as stateless by other States. Certainly, individuals who are not refugees may have many different reasons for renouncing protection: for example, some may wish to avoid military or civil service, others may repudiate the country of their nationality owing to a profound disagreement with the political status quo in that country without a concomitant risk of persecution, still others may be trying to avoid criminal prosecution, and yet others may wish to sever relations with the country of their nationality in order to try to establish a new life under more favourable conditions in another country.74 However, assuming that the persons concerned genuinely do not have a well-founded fear of persecution, these are hardly the sorts of reasons that States in today’s world would be likely to regard as valid for purposes of implementing the recommendation in the Final Act. 72 73 limitation in time whereby only persons renouncing the protection of the State of their nationality as a result of events occurring before 1951 would be included. However, the former point is now academic because of the large number of accessions to the 1951 Convention, and the second point is also academic because the 1967 Protocol removes the date limitation in the 1951 Convention. Kiribati and Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (UN Treaty Collection: http://treaties.un.org/). Note that the Statelessness Conference also unanimously adopted the following resolution in its Final Act, again with an eye to the protection of refugees: “The Conference, Being of the opinion that Article 33 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 is an expression of the generally accepted principle that no State should expel or return a person in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, Has not found it necessary to include in the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons an equivalent to Article 33 of the of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951.” 74 Note that the Recommendation in the Final Act of the Statelessness Conference contains echoes of the Constitution of the International Refugee Organization (IRO), Section C of Part I of Annex I of which provided that “persons will become the concern of the Organization … if they have … expressed valid objections to returning to [their countries of nationality or former habitual residence.]” Annex I to the IRO’s Constitution went on to provide that the following were considered valid objections: “(i) Persecution, or fear, based on reasonable grounds of persecution because of race, religion, nationality or political opinions … (ii) Objections of a political nature judged by the Organization to be ‘valid’ as contemplated in paragraph 8(a) of the Report of the Third Committee of the General Assembly as adopted by the Assembly on 12 February 1946. (iii) … compelling family reasons arising out of previous persecution or compelling reasons of infirmity or illness.” According to the IRO’s Manual for Eligibility Officers, p. 22, para. 11: “It is valid objections which enable a distinction to be drawn between refugees proper and simple migrants. The judgment of the validity of expressed objections is at once the most crucial and the most difficult point in determining whether an individual is in the Mandate or not.” After cautioning about that expressed objections should not always necessarily be taken at face value, because the underlying reality may be more complex, the IRO Manual went on to say at pp. 23 to 24 that “[t]here is a colossal list of objections that are expressed but are not valid”, including, for example: “bad conditions at home”, “bright hopes in the western world”, “lack of housing”, “uncertainty of work in somewhat specialised occupations”, “family feuds and quarrels”, “the desire to join a relation abroad or not to rejoin one’s family at home”, “fear of punishment [that is not related to persecution]”, etc. 21