38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 250 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 1/16/2021 12:59 PM [Vol. 38:2 have been "displaced from formal belonging" 38 in the nation-State system since at least the nineteenth century. 39 However, statelessness had not been defined as an international law concept until 1954. 40 States created the concept of statelessness against the backdrop of their topdown bureaucratic perspective that only States determine who a citizen-national is. 41 The current definition still embodies this perspective. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948 included the right to nationality, paving the way for the 1954 Statelessness Convention. 42 After drafting the UDHR, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that a treaty on statelessness "seem[ed] to be knocking at our doors for consideration almost immediately." 43 But States remained unwilling to wholly surrender their discretion in defining statelessness. Consequently, State privilege in international law influenced the evolution of the agreed-upon definition. The State was regarded as supreme not only in granting civil rights, but also that the grant of an individual's status was exclusive to the State. 44 After the Second World War, the international community drew attention to the loosely-defined "statelessness." States were still reeling from the harrowing loss of lives and from witnessing the suffering of "stateless persons" in Europe.45 But statelessness was (and still is) an amorphous concept. Initially intertwined with the concept of refugee protection, 46 the broad concept of statelessness originally encompassed both States' original definition of refugees as groups of (de jure) stateless people and other "stateless persons" in general. 47 In December 1947, the Human Rights Commission (HRC) noted the lack of agreements protecting refugees from the Second World War and highlighted the 38. KRISTY A. BELTON, STATELESSNESS IN THE CARIBBEAN: THE PARADOX OF BELONGING IN A POSTNATIONAL WORLD 27 (2017). 39. 40. Id. See Amal de Chickera & Laura van Waas, Unpacking Statelessness, in UNDERSTANDING STATELESSNESS 53 (Tendayi Bloom et al. eds., 2017) (describing the historic evolution and contemporary understanding of statelessness). 41. See Aaron Hale & Fredline M'Cormack-Hale, Statelessness, Nationality, and Citizenship in Sierra Leone, 35 J. GLOB. S. STUD. 311 (2018). 42. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217 A(III), art. 15, U.N. Doc. A/RES/3/217A (Dec. 10, 1948). 43. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Promise of Human Rights, 26 FOREIGN AFFS. 470, 477 (1948). 44. See IAN BROWNLIE, PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW 390 (5th ed. 1998); Alexander Orakhelashvili, The Position of the Individual in International Law, 31 CAL. W. INT'L L. J. 241 (2001); Dinah Shelton, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, 100 AM. SOC. INT'L L. 249 (2006). 45. Brad Blitz, The State and the Stateless: The Legacy of Hannah Arendt Reconsidered, in UNDERSTANDING STATELESSNESS 70, 72 (Tendayi Bloom et al. eds., 2017). I put stateless persons in quotes because, at this time, States did not really explicitly know what they meant when they used this term. 46. For an excellent historical overview, see James Hathaway, The Evolution of Refugee Status in International Law: 1920-1950, 33 INT'L & COMP. L. Q. 348 (1984). 47. Id. See also ATLE GRAHL-MADSEN, 1 THE STATUS OF REFUGEES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW 77 (1966).