protection gap.66 He therefore proposed that persons renouncing the protection of their State of nationality for reasons considered to be valid be included in the Convention definition of statelessness on an equal footing with de jure stateless persons.67 However, this proposal was not accepted and instead the Conference provisionally agreed that Contracting States should be permitted to treat such persons as stateless under the Convention if they so wished, without actually being required to do so.68 But even this created problems for many delegates – because, for example, of uncertainty about whether a decision by one Contracting State to treat such a person as stateless would be binding upon other Contracting States 69 – and so the recommendation in the Final Act ended up being adopted as a highly diluted compromise, with no legally binding effect.70 Fortunately, this compromise would seem to be of little or no concern today. Leaving aside the fact that the purpose of the Conference was not to create a new instrument for the protection of refugees, the Belgian delegate’s fears have proven to be unfounded and the problem is actually the other way around: States have been far more reticent about acceding to the 1954 Convention than to the 1951 Convention and its 1967 Protocol. As of March 2010 there were only 65 States Parties to the 1954 Convention, compared to 147 States Parties to the 1951 Convention and/or the 1967 Protocol.71 Only two States were party to the 1954 Convention without also being party to the 1951 Convention or 1967 Protocol.72 66 67 68 69 70 71 See the argument of the Belgian delegate that the inclusion of de facto stateless persons “would ensure that bona fide refugees in countries which had not signed the 1951 Convention would not receive less protection than stateless persons in countries which signed the instrument under discussion” (E/CONF.17/SR.10, p. 11). See also the Belgian delegate’s comments in E/CONF.17/SR.14 at p. 6: “If it were made impossible to extend the provisions of the [Statelessness] Convention to de facto stateless persons, he wondered what would be the position of a bona fide refugee in a country which had not ratified the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees but ratified the Convention on stateless persons. Such a person would obviously benefit by neither convention, and would be in a more unfavourable position than a mere stateless person, whose statelessness might in some cases be voluntary. He did not think that the Conference could justifiably refuse all protection to such refugees and make veritable pariahs out of them.” However, certain other delegates strongly opposed this proposal, believing that it would result in fewer States becoming party to the Convention, or in reservations being made to the definition of a stateless person. See Belgian proposal in E/CONF.17/L.3: “For the purposes of the present Protocol, the term ‘Stateless Persons’ shall designate persons who are not considered as its nationals by any State according to its law or who invoke reasons recognized as valid by the State in which they are resident for renouncing the protection of the country of which they are nationals.” The following definition of a stateless person was adopted by the Conference at first reading, E/CONF.17/L.11/Add.2: “1. For the purpose of this Protocol (Convention) the term ‘stateless person’ means a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law. 2. Nothing in this Protocol (Convention) shall be construed to mean that its provisions cannot be made applicable to any person living outside his own country who, for reasons recognized as valid by the State in which he is a resident, has renounced the protection of the State of which he is, or was, a national …” The Style Committee subsequently proposed changing the text of the second paragraph of the definition to: “2. Nothing in this Convention shall prevent any State from applying the provisions thereof to any person residing in its territory who, for reasons recognized as valid by that State, has renounced the protection of the State of which he is a national” (E/CONF.17/L.11/Add.2). See, for example, the President’s summary of the issues in E/CONF.17/SR.13, pp. 9 - 12 and E/CONF.17/SR.14, pp. 2 - 3. This was much to the exasperation of the Belgian delegate, who said “everyone knew that, while contracting States tried to carry out the actual provisions of an instrument, they did not pay much attention to the recommendations in the final act. In that matter the example of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was conclusive” (E/CONF.17/SR.14, p. 6). Had the Belgian delegate’s initial proposal been adopted it would in some ways not have gone as far as the 1951 Convention, since, unlike the refugee definition in the 1951 Convention, it would have excluded persons who are willing but unable to avail themselves of the protection of their State of nationality (see footnote 65 above). On the other hand, in other ways it would have gone further, since it did not contain a 20