Whether there might be any other reasons that States could or should consider as valid is a question that is returned to in Part II 75 and Part III 76 below. Contrary to what UNHCR has said, the Conference did not necessarily consider that all de facto stateless persons are refugees.77 In particular, as stated by the President of the Conference: It had been said that the provisions of the Convention relating to the status of stateless persons should not be applicable to de facto stateless persons, because most of them were refugees. That analogy should not be carried too far, for there were cases in which a person who could not in any way be regarded as a refugee might for various reasons be deprived of the protection of the state of which he was legally a national. It was easy to imagine, for example, the case of a person who, while abroad, was refused an extension of his passport by the consular authorities of the country of which he was a national and was instructed to return to that country. If that person, for reasons other than the fear of persecution or the like, did not return to his country he was henceforth deprived of the protection of the diplomatic and consular authorities of his country and thus became a de facto stateless person, although that did not make it possible to regard him as a refugee. Such cases were not rare, hence it was natural that States should be given the possibility of extending the Convention’s provisions to de facto stateless persons … 78 Even if the persons to whom the President was referring should indeed be considered to be de facto stateless – which although they are unprotected in their host State would seem debatable if they are able to return to their State of nationality79 – they are not covered by the recommendation in the Final Act since they have not renounced the protection of their State of nationality but have been refused it. The same would also be true of any other categories of persons who are refused or otherwise unable to obtain the protection of the State of their nationality. 3. THE 1961 CONVENTION ON THE REDUCTION OF STATELESSNESS In December 1954, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 896 (IX) on the Elimination or Reduction of Future Statelessness. The resolution noted the work of the International Law Commission in producing draft Conventions on the Elimination and Reduction of Future Statelessness and expressed the General Assembly’s desire that an international conference of plenipotentiaries be convened to conclude a convention for the reduction or elimination of future statelessness as soon as at least twenty States had communicated to the SecretaryGeneral their willingness to cooperate in such a conference. It took until March 1959 for the Conference on the Elimination or Reduction of Future Statelessness to be convened in Geneva, but the Conference did not manage to complete its work in time owing to the complexity of the issues under discussion, in particular the differences of approach towards nationality problems by different States. The Conference therefore had to be reconvened to 75 76 77 78 79 See section 7 below at p. 59. See section 1011.3 below. See, for example: (i) UNHCR and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, “Nationality and Statelessness: A Handbook for Parliamentarians”, op. cit., p.12: “The drafters of the 1954 Convention presumed that all persons without an effective nationality – that is, all de facto stateless persons, were refugees”; (ii) UNHCR, “Training Package: Statelessness and Related Nationality Issues”, 1996 (revised 1998), p. 7, para. 14: “The drafters [of the 1954 Convention] presumed that de facto stateless persons were those who still had a nationality in name, but for whom that nationality was not effective. They presumed that all those without an effective nationality, that all de facto stateless persons, were refugees.” E/CONF.17/SR.13, p. 10. See further section 10 below. 22