Premise 1: Persons who do not enjoy the rights attached to their nationality have a nationality that is ineffective. Premise 2: Persons who have a nationality that is ineffective are de facto stateless.129 Conclusion: Persons who do not enjoy the rights attached to their nationality are de facto stateless. It should be noted that under human rights law, the right to a nationality is distinct from the rights attached to nationality (i.e. the rights that must be granted to persons who are nationals), and the violation of one does not necessarily entail a violation of the other. Thus, a State could in theory violate a person’s right to nationality but nevertheless grant to all persons within its jurisdiction, irrespective of nationality, the rights that must be granted to its nationals. Conversely, a State could in principle violate the rights that it must grant to its nationals without actually violating the right to nationality. Hence, a State may secure effective enjoyment of the right to a nationality even if it does not secure effective enjoyment of the rights attached to its nationality.130 If Premise 1 above is correct, it follows that even if a person enjoys an effective right to a nationality, his or her nationality will nevertheless be ineffective if he or she does not enjoy the rights attached to that nationality.131 Such a conclusion is unremarkable in and of itself, but combining it with Premise 2 above results in a second conclusion that is by no means self-evident: a person who enjoys an effective right to a nationality may nevertheless be “stateless”. In a limited sense, the latter conclusion is already implied by the traditional conception of statelessness discussed in Part I above, whereby persons are de facto stateless if they are outside the State of their nationality and de facto unprotected by that State in relation to other States. However, as mentioned above,132 Hudson commented already in the early 1950’s that: The so-called stateless persons are de facto nationals of a State who are outside of its territory and devoid of its protection; they are, therefore, not stateless: it might be better to speak of “unprotected persons” and to call this group “de facto unprotected persons” 129 130 131 132 Assuming that the persons concerned do not have a second nationality that is effective. Cf. para. 36 of the passage by Cordova quoted on pp. 13 to 14 above, according to which persons who do not enjoy the rights flowing from their nationality do not enjoy an effective right to a nationality. But note that Cordova was writing at a time when the international human rights regime was in its infancy. Cf. the statement by UNHCR in 1997 in “State of the World’s Refugees”, op. cit., footnote 112 above, chapter 6: “Under international law, a stateless person is one ‘who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law.’ This definition is helpfully concise and to the point. But it is also a very limited and somewhat legalistic definition, referring to a specific group of people known as de jure stateless persons. It does not encompass the many people, usually described as de facto stateless persons, who are unable to establish their nationality or whose citizenship is disputed by one or more countries. This chapter uses the notion of statelessness in its broader sense, to denote all those people who lack what has become known as an ‘effective nationality’, and who are consequently unable to enjoy the rights that are associated with citizenship” [emphasis added]. Cf. also the statement by UNHCR in 1991 that de facto statelessness may be understood “as the absence of an effective nationality for protection of basic rights” (para. 1 of the discussion note on stateless persons submitted by UNHCR to the Working Group on Solutions and Protection, Doc. No. WSGP/12, 10 April 1991 as annexed to EC/1992/SCP/CRP.4, 1 April 1992). The phrasing of these two statements by UNHCR is different from Premise 1 in the text above since it implies that the absence of enjoyment of the rights associated with nationality does not make nationality ineffective, but rather may be the consequence of an ineffective nationality. See text above footnote 37 above. 38