38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 2020] STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC 1/16/2021 12:59 PM 291 when they drafted the 1954 Convention, 339 and it is unlikely that they will commit to one concrete meaning of de facto statelessness in the near future. This is because the concept has not yet crystallized and is extremely fuzzy, more than legal statelessness. It may unrealistically demand too little or too much of States, and States did not want that uncertainty in the obligation when they drafted the 1954 Convention. More so now. This approach is not, therefore, politically viable and workable. It will be one step forward but two steps back. The third movement relates to various efforts instituting new terms (but still related to de facto statelessness), such as "undetermined nationality," and "risk of statelessness," 340 as well as "ineffective nationality." 341 Exemplarily, the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights in Expelled Dominicans and Haitians declared Dominican-born children of Haitian descent, whom the Dominican Republic refused to register as citizens, to be at "risk of statelessness." 342 The Court held that the Dominican Republic had an obligation to resolve their "risk of statelessness," 343 triggering an obligation to guarantee citizenship to the Dominican-born children. 344 While a novel analytical approach extending protection under the law of statelessness to individuals who face a "risk of statelessness," 345 the Court failed to specify what "risk of statelessness" meant. Risk is a matter of degree and is relative to a baseline. I posit that the term still needs conceptual precision and does not solve the ontological challenge to statelessness. Otherwise, this ambiguous term, together with "ineffective nationality" and "undetermined nationality," could help maintain statelessness' ideographic status and foster continued interplays of ideologies in statelessness identification. Although I concede that one cannot completely insulate determinations of statelessness from the vestiges of politics, a clearer conceptual framework of statelessness could reduce room for uncertainty and promote legitimacy. Rather than misreading the language of the definition to expand it and end up with formalistic results, or incorporating the explicitly excluded notion of de facto statelessness into a strictly legal definition, or substituting it with other imprecise 339. Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, Dec. 13, 1975, 989 U.N.T.S. 175. In fact, States opposed the inclusion of de facto stateless persons in the definition in the 1954 Statelessness Convention. See Weis, supra note 53, at 261. 340. See generally UNHCR, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018 (Jun. 19, 2019), https://www.unhcr.org/statistics/unhcrstats/5d08d7ee7/unhcr-global-trends-2018.html (including persons of undetermined nationality and those at risk of statelessness in UNHCR's reports on statelessness). 341. See e.g., DAVID WEISSBRODT, THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF NON-CITIZENS 84 (2008) (arguing that the definition should be broadened since persons with 'no effective nationality' are, for all practical purposes, stateless, and should be labeled and treated as such). 342. Expelled Dominicans and Haitians v. Dominican Republic, Preliminary Objections, Merits, Reparations and Costs, Judgment, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (ser. C) No. 282, ¶ 298 (Aug. 28, 2014). 343. Id. 344. Id. ¶ 458. 345. David C. Baluarte, The Risk of Statelessness: Reasserting a Rule for the Protection of the Right to Nationality, 19 YALE HUM. RTS. & DEV. L.J. 47, 52 (2017).