A Typology of Statelessness A De Jure Vis-à-Vis De Facto Statelessness Since its 1946 Memorandum, Statelessness and Some of its Causes: An Outline, the UN has distinguished between two general categories of stateless individuals: de jure and de facto.6 In the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (‘1954 Statelessness Convention’), a de jure stateless individual is defined as someone ‘who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’.7 The phrase ‘under the operation of its law’ is thereby interpreted as a requirement for states to determine nationality based on nationality law as well as state practice, such as civil registration.8 While the merits of the de jure statelessness definition are that it is concise, unambiguous and quantifiable — an individual either possesses a nationality or does not — it falls short as it fails to consider the attributes and quality of the nationality.9 The de facto statelessness definition addresses this failure.10 In A Study on Statelessness, the UN defines de facto stateless individuals as those who, having left the country of which they were nationals, no longer enjoy the protection and assistance of their national authorities, either because these authorities refuse to grant them assistance and protection, or because they themselves renounce the assistance and protection of the countries of which they are nationals.11 STATELESSNESS AS RESPONSIBILITY AND RECOGNITION A Nationality as a Legal Concept As shown by its UN working definition, the concept of de facto statelessness concerns the scope of protection that comes with the possession of nationality. To understand what this means, one must turn to nationality as a legal concept. There are two ways in which nationality is understood.12 First, individuals who are in possession of a nationality are seen as citizens of a country. 13 This view is ‘adopted by many international human rights law scholars’ who focus on the close 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 A Study on Statelessness also distinguishes between stateless individuals and refugees, pointing out that the latter is a subtype of the former: United Nations, A Study on Statelessness, UN Doc E/1112;E/1112/Add.1 (August 1949) 6–7 (‘United Nations Study on Statelessness’). Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, opened for signature 28 September 1954, 360 UNTS 117 (entered into force 6 June 1960) art 1(1). See Betsy L Fisher, ‘“The Operation of Law” in Statelessness Determinations Under the 1954 Statelessness Convention’ (2015) 33 Wisconsin International Law Journal 254. See Carol A Batchelor, ‘Stateless Persons: Some Gaps in International Protection’ (1995) 7(2) International Journal of Refugee Law 232, 232. ibid 232–33. United Nations Study on Statelessness (n 6) 6. The term ‘nationality’ is also used to describe belonging to a national group: see, eg, Katherine Tonkiss, ‘Statelessness and the Performance of Citizenship-as-Nationality’, in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss, and Phillip Cole (eds), Understanding Statelessness (Routledge, 1st edn, 2017) 241. In this case, ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ are often treated as synonymous: see Kelly Staples, ‘The Ethics of Statelessness’ in Birgit Schippers (ed), The Routledge Handbook to Rethinking Ethics in International Relations (Routledge 2020) 148, 149; David S Weissbrodt and Clay Collins, ‘The Human Rights of Stateless Persons’ (2006) 28(1) Human Rights Quarterly 245, 246. 239