oversight”.48 However, this is not really correct. Although in 1949 the UN Secretary-General had recommended that ECOSOC “recognize the necessity of providing at an appropriate time permanent international machinery for ensuring the protection of stateless persons” (see section 1.2 above), neither ECOSOC nor the UN General Assembly ever adopted a resolution to this effect. When the UN General Assembly adopted UNHCR’s Statute in 1950, it extended the High Commissioner’s competence only to refugees, not to stateless persons who are not refugees.49 Hence, the true obstacles to providing in the 1954 Convention for a duty of cooperation by Contracting States with a supervisory body were not procedural or time constraints, but rather were due to the fact that the UN General Assembly had not created a body for the protection of stateless persons in the first place. It therefore made perfect sense that, as noted by the UN Secretary-General prior to the start of the Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Stateless Persons, the draft Protocol relating to the Status of Stateless Persons excluded application of the provisions on supervisory responsibility in Article 35 of the 1951 Convention mutatis mutandis to stateless persons, and that no Government had proposed otherwise when asked to review the text of the draft Protocol and of the 1951 Convention before the Conference.50 The origins of UNHCR’s current mandate for the protection of non-refugee stateless persons are relatively recent, dating back only to the late 1980’s.51 48 49 50 51 Carol A. Batchelor, “UNHCR and Issues Related to Nationality”, Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3, 1995, at p. 92. Batchelor argues the point in greater detail by reference to the travaux préparatoires of the of the 1954 Convention in “Stateless Persons: Some Gaps in International Protection”, International Journal of Refugee Law, Vol. 7, 1995 at pp. 245 – 247. According to Batchelor in the latter article: “Governments were not asked to comment upon a possible article 35 [per the 1951 Convention] and there was, therefore, nothing upon which the Conference of Plenipotentiaries could base a discussion.” This is incorrect, since UN General Assembly resolution 629 (VII) of 1952 had requested the UN Secretary-General “to communicate the provisions of the draft protocol [relating to the status of stateless persons] to all the governments invited to the United Nations Conference on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons held at Geneva in July 1951, with a request for their comments, in particular on those provisions of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees which they would be prepared to apply to the various categories of stateless persons”. Batchelor additionally states: “as the Ad hoc Committee had not made provisions for a supervisory body in its mutatis mutandis version [of the draft Protocol relating to the Status of Stateless Persons], no discussion took place [at the Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Stateless Persons] on a possible ‘article 35 body’ for inclusion mutatis mutandis in the 1954 Convention.” This implies that the Conference only discussed provisions that were included in the draft Protocol, which is again incorrect since the Conference actually discussed and included in the 1954 Convention certain provisions from the 1951 Convention that the Ad hoc Committee had not included in the draft Protocol, e.g. Articles 8 and 9 of the 1954 Convention. UN General Assembly resolution 428 (V) of 14 December 1950 on “Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees”. See also UN General Assembly resolution 319 (V) of 3 December 1949 on “Refugees and Stateless Persons”. The latter resolution took into account the UN Secretary-General’s 1949 Study of Statelessness, but requested the Secretary-General and ECOSOC only to prepare draft provisions for the functioning of the High Commissioner’s Office for Refugees, not for the functioning of a High Commissioner’s Office for Refugees and Stateless Persons. ECOSOC, United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Stateless Persons, “The Draft Protocol relating to the Status of Stateless Persons: Memorandum by the Secretary-General”, para. 64 (which must be read in the light of para. 30 of the Memorandum). Para. 64 states: “the draft protocol does not provide for [the application of Article 35 of the 1951 Refugee Convention], mutatis mutandis, to stateless persons.” Para. 30 explains that the observations of Governments are only noted in the Memorandum when: (i) a Government was not in favour of applying, or had a reservation, one of the provisions in the draft Protocol; or (ii) a Government had proposed including a provision from the 1951 Convention that had not been included in the draft Protocol. Note that the UK proposal referred to in footnote 48 above was not made directly in response to the Memorandum, but was made during the Conference itself. See Introduction above. 16