38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 2020] STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC 1/16/2021 12:59 PM 269 possible rights. A few States, including the UK, even stress full compliance with international obligations under all applicable statelessness treaties (the other global treaty being the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness). 175 Others proclaim compliance with all international law norms, 176 or with regional human rights treaties and statelessness treaties. 177 Some add humanitarian traditions. 178 The professed objectives underlying these proclamations appear commendable. The reality, however, is that statelessness is used to provide rights to the excluded, but is simultaneously deployed in tyranny to subject people to the rule of the State without the status of citizenship. When the State constitutes one to be stateless, the State is declaring that they have official status as "stateless" and are entitled to rights under the 1954 Statelessness Convention, constituting their exclusion from polities but according them only very limited rights. A stateless person receives the protection of the State, albeit in a limited and abstruse sense. Furthermore, when the State constitutes one as stateless, the State could declare them a thrall subject to the State's rule with very limited rights to participate in society. According to Matthew J. Gibney, based on the principle of subjection, everyone "living under or subject to" the laws of a State should be members of the polity. 179 State rule "is legitimate only if the people consent to its rule, and decisions are only legitimate if those affected by them are consulted and involved in the decision-making process." 180 Therefore, when stateless people are mandated to follow the laws of the State but are accorded no voice in State affairs and 175. U.K. BORDER AGENCY, Home Office Instruction, 6 (2016), https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/501509/Statelessness_AI_v2.0__EXT_.pdf (last visited May 2, 2019) [hereinafter "U.K. BORDER AGENCY, Home Office Instruction"]. 176. Law of Georgia on the Legal Status of Aliens and Stateless Persons, art. 1, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/99405/118651/F1390570618/GEO99405%20Eng.pdf (last visited Apr. 15, 2019). Georgia also refers to rights and freedoms guaranteed under its Constitution. 177. See the Republic of Panama's Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores' Decreto Ejecutivo Numero 10 (de 16 de Enero 2019), Preamble. Panama refers to the norms of international law, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the statelessness conventions. Panama has explicitly declared that the purpose of determining statelessness is to ensure the widest possible enjoyment of human rights for stateless persons and to provide extraterritorial effect to the status of a stateless person. Id., ch. 1, arts. 2–3. Interpretation should largely favor the person applying for stateless status. Id., ch. 1, art. 4. 178. See the Republic of the Philippines' Department Circular No. 58, series of 2012: Establishing the Refugee and Stateless Status Determination Procedure, sec. 2 (asserting consistency with "the laws, international commitments and humanitarian traditions and concerns"). 179. Matthew J. Gibney, Statelessness and the Right to Citizenship, 32 FORCED MIGRATION REV. 50, 51 (2009). 180. Id.