Forthcoming in the Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law (27) These notwithstanding, the discussions at the ILC and the debates at the Sixth Committee helped shed some light on both the legal intricacies surrounding the topic, as well as the political difficulties evoked by it. The ‘failure’ to codify the law of asylum was yet another omen of how topics concerning migration would be received by states in the decades to follow. III. The Nationality of Individuals and Statelessness A. From Elimination to Reduction of Statelessness The law of nationality was one of the first topics selected for codification by the League of Nation’s Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law,48 later leading to the adoption of the Hague Convention on the Conflict of Nationality Laws (1930). If, at that time, the main preoccupation of states were the effects of conflict of nationality laws on military obligations, the status of married women and their children, and the technical aspects of statelessness, the use of mass denationalization as a tool of persecution before and during WWII exposed the consequences of the unrestrained freedom of states in this area.49 It was against this backdrop that ‘the law of nationality’ found its way back to the list of topics whose codification was ‘necessary or desirable’ 50 – although this time by the Committee’s successor, the ILC. 1. The Manley O. Hudson Report 48 See S. Rosanne (ed.), League of Nations: Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law (1925–1928), vol. II (Oceana Publications 1972), at 34–54. 49 As noted by the UN Secretariat in its preparatory survey: ‘[state] practice still continues to multiply the potential causes of statelessness. In particular, many countries have recently adopted or are on the eve of adopting legislation which provides for the deprivation of certain classes of their citizens of their nationality by way of punishment for disloyalty or otherwise.’ in UN ILC, ‘Survey of International Law in Relation to the Work of Codification of the International Law Commission’, at 45. 50 UN ILC, ‘Summary Records and Documents of the First Session’, at 281. 13 Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4816199