categories’, such as refugees, stateless persons and displaced persons, had not yet been clearly defined at the time.81 What is certain is that the original idea of a Protocol relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, attached to the 1951 Refugee Convention, was meant to reflect the link between stateless persons and refugees, but practical considerations prevented the Conference of Plenipotentiaries to consider both issues of refugees and statelessness, with the later being postponed until 1954. During the drafting of the 1951 Refugee Convention, States decided to leave the issue of statelessness (at the time considered to cover non-refugee stateless persons) to a later date, and they agreed to concentrate exclusively on refugees (who for the most part were also stateless but needn’t be). 82 Since then, ‘statelessness, the condition of being without citizenship, was distinguished from the condition of being a refugee’. 83 This is mainly because the causes of statelessness are very wide.84 These have been identified by UNHCR as being of three kinds.85 The first of these kinds refers to causes linked to the dissolution and separation of States and transfer of territory between States (e.g., the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the post-colonial formation of States in Asia and Africa). The second of these kinds refers to technical causes through the operation of citizenship laws or administrative practices. The third and final cause of statelessness is discrimination and arbitrary deprivation of nationality (e.g., ethnic and racial discrimination of Faili Kurds, Roma, Rohingya of Myanmar, refugees from Bhutan, the Bidoons in the Gulf States, Dominicans of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic etc.); in this case, discrimination is often both a cause of statelessness (e.g., the arbitrary deprivation of nationality) and an effect of statelessness on the person (e.g., the denial of human rights through discriminatory acts).86 This is quite evident from reading ECOSOC Resolution 248(IX) of 6 and 8 August 1949 which repeatedly refers to ‘refugees and stateless persons’ in the English text, but to ‘réfugiés et des personnes déplacées’ in the French text; in UN Ad Hoc Committee on Refugees and Stateless Persons, Ad Hoc Committee on Statelessness and Related Problems, Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons - Memorandum by the Secretary-General, 3 January 1950, E/AC.32/2, Article 2 - available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae68c280.html [accessed 16 January 2014]. 82 Ad Hoc Committee on Statelessness and Related Problems, UN Doc. E/AC.32/SR.2 (1950), 7-8. See also, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) - Nehemiah Robinson, Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. Its History and Interpretation, 1997, part two, article 1 available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4785f03d2.html [accessed 17 January 2014] 83 Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, ‘Stateless Persons and Protection under the 1951 Convention or Refugees, Beware of Academic Error!’ (December 1992), texte présenté au Colloque portant sur ‘Les récents développements en droit de l’immigration’, Barreau de Québec, 22 janvier 1993, at p.5. 84 Office of the UNHCR, The State of the World’s Refugees 2012 – In search of solidarity, OUP 2012, pp.97-106. 85 Interparliamentary Union and UNHCR, Nationality and Statelessness: A Handbook for Parliamentarians No 22, 2014, pp. 30-42. 86 For instance, UNHCR has referred to the ‘erased persons’ from Slovenia as being subjected to discrimination in two respects: the decision to erase them targeted a specific group of foreigners only, namely the citizens from the SFRY; many of the erased faced discriminatory treatment because of a lack of legal status. UNHCR Submission in Kuric, para.4.2.6. 81 14