Protocol, but also persons who come within the extended refugee definition under the
Office’s mandate because:
they are outside their country of origin or habitual residence and unable or unwilling to return there
owing to serious and indiscriminate threats to life, physical integrity or freedom resulting from
generalized violence or events seriously disturbing public order.201
Thus, UNHCR’s refugee mandate covers de facto stateless persons who fall within the 1951
Convention/1967 Protocol refugee protection regime, as well as the vast majority of de facto
stateless persons who are covered by regional complementary protection regimes. Certain
persons, however, who qualify for subsidiary protection in the EU may not fall under
UNHCR’s refugee mandate, i.e. persons who are not Convention refugees and who face a
real risk of serious harm not resulting from generalized violence or events seriously
disturbing public order. It is submitted, therefore, that:
If UNHCR does indeed have a general mandate for addressing de facto statelessness,
then the only persons falling within that mandate who do not already come within the
Office’s refugee mandate are:
1. Persons outside the State of their nationality
− who do not qualify for refugee status; and
− who in the State of their nationality face a real risk of serious harm not resulting
from generalized violence or events seriously disturbing public order; and
− who are unable, or, owing to such risk, unwilling to avail themselves of the
protection of that State.
2. Persons outside the State of their nationality
− who do not qualify for refugee status; and
− who are unable avail themselves of protection owing to, at a minimum, being unable
to return to the State of their nationality.
UNHCR should thererefore reconsider its requirement that Country Operations should
provide statistics on de facto stateless persons generally, so as to be more precise about the
categories of de facto stateless persons on whom statistics are actually required. More
broadly, the Office needs to clarify the scope and content of its mandate for the identification,
prevention and/or reduction of de facto statelessness, and/or for the protection of de facto
stateless persons.
201
UNHCR, “Refugee Status Determination: Identifying Who is a Refugee”, Self-study module 2, 1 September
2005, pp. 8 - 9. The extended refugee mandate is pursuant to various ECOSOC and UN General Assembly
Resolutions adopted during the period 1975 – 1995.
66
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