38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 282 BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 1/16/2021 12:59 PM [Vol. 38:2 citizenship. 279 More so, not all documents grant rights. 280 In the Semeda Case, while Justice McCloskey held that the UK's definition of statelessness aligns with the international law definition, 281 he admitted that the question of statelessness frequently turns on other things, in particular possession of or access to documents "which denote[] that the individual is recognized by one of the [S]tates of the world as one of its nationals." 282 The problem is that although individuals are charged with the burden of proof of statelessness, many stateless persons are without identity documentation or the means to obtain it. 283 Another case in point is RRT Case No. 1218580, where Australia's Refugee Review Tribunal leaned on the non-submission of documents to surmise that an applicant was not stateless. 284 Instead of providing the required multiple documents to prove citizenship (not actually to prove the lack of citizenship), the applicant submitted an identity card. 285 The tribunal stated "[e]ven if three separate documents were required, the Tribunal considers that the fact that the applicant has not submitted the registration certificate or the PDS or ration card does not necessarily mean that he was never issued with these documents." 286 Such pronouncement is problematic because it impliedly assumed that the applicant was issued citizenship documents, yet just did not submit them to the tribunal. The inference drew the presence of citizenship from the non-submission of documents. But it could simply be that the applicant was not issued those documents in the first place. Apart from evidentiary concerns, it becomes problematic when States are afforded wide latitude to include and exclude considerations they deem relevant in an analysis. State discretion results in an assessment that incorporates other 279. See, e.g., Laurie Parsons & Sabina Lawreniuk, Seeing Like the Stateless: Documentation and the Mobilities of Liminal Citizenship in Cambodia, 62 POL. GEOG. 1, 4 (demonstrating that, for example in Cambodia, four documents prove citizenship: birth certificate, ID card, voting card, family book, and a letter of immigration; entitlement to certain documents is predicated on the possession of others). 280. Id. 281. Semeda Case, supra note 117, ¶ 13. 282. Id. ¶ 16. While documents are important for identity determination, danger inheres where they become solely determinative in the State's exercise of discretion. 283. BRONWEN MANDY, IDENTIFICATION IN THE CONTEXT OF FORCED DISPLACEMENT 7 (2016). See generally Samantha Balaton-Chrimes, Statelessness, Identity Cards and Citizenship as Status in the Case of the Nubians of Kenya, 18 CITIZENSHIP STUD. 15 (2014); Council of Europe, Legal status / Identity documents / Statelessness, https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-and-travellers/legal-status-/-iddocuments (last visited May 2, 2019); see also Jay Milbrandt, Stateless, 20 CARDOZO J. INT'L & COMP. L. 75 (2011). 284. RRT Case No. 1218580, (2013) RRTA 279, Australia: Refugee Review Tribunal ¶ 35 (Apr. 2). 285. Id. at ¶ 32. 286. Id. at ¶ 35. Although this case focused primarily on refugee status, it nonetheless illustrates the role of documents in statelessness determination.