38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX38.2 (7) TEMPROSA.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 2020] STATELESSNESS AS RHETORIC 1/16/2021 12:59 PM 305 an obligation of result that is rigid. It does not fetter the reasonable discretion of decision makers. 418 Likewise, because it is an obligation of conduct on the part of the State, the burden of ascertaining status is shifted to the State, which has more resources at its disposal than a potential stateless person. Moreover, it serves as a safeguard against arbitrary and capricious decision-making. Reasonable steps necessarily include a reason-based interpretation of law as applied to the facts of the case. In the event that a treaty body for the 1954 Statelessness Convention is not created, the duty is especially useful in raising the quality and credibility, as well as the legitimacy, of the results of domestic determinations. Second, States must also bear the duty of cooperating with one another and with the proposed treaty body on statelessness determinations. Without this duty, States will continue to talk past each other and avoid dealing with the ontological issue. The definition of statelessness will either remain a siloed-off, strange cipher that no State understands, or it will become an empty vessel that privileges State discretion. Determinations will continue to be a monologue, rather than a dialogue between and among concerned States for the protection of the individual. A duty to cooperate will help yield sound determinations and promote candor between and among States in citizenship matters. Eventually, if the treaty-body on statelessness is created, States could come before the treaty body in dialogue with one another. They may also be persuaded to comply with existing commitments on statelessness matters because a duty to cooperate with the treaty body exists. The treaty body will not be as effective if States bear no duty to cooperate with it. States will not heed its general comments and views and respond to its call for reports, meetings, and conferences. In the end, inasmuch as the regulation of nationality is no longer within the exclusive domaine réservé of States, a duty of cooperation will also further the development of norms of international law on citizenship-related issues. CONCLUSION The Article's proposed framework revisions the definition of statelessness, not in line with how this term was originally conceived by the framers of the 1954 Statelessness Convention, but in accordance with the purpose of the 1954 Statelessness Convention. This Article further suggests additional possibilities for reforming the definition of statelessness and the way that stateless status determinations are conducted. Up to this point, statelessness has assumed a rhetoric-like discourse in international law. The existing definition, a product of the first half of the twentieth century, has become an ideograph that accommodates State-privileging ideologies. States have so far used this definition as a naming and labelling device of 418. Id. at ¶ 18 (citing British Oxygen Co Ltd. v. Minister of Technology, (1970) U.K.H.L., (1971) A.C. 610, United Kingdom: House of Lords (Jul. 15, 1970)).