Many of the stateless persons in the last category are refugees recognized by governments and/or UNHCR on a prima facie basis. This is the case, for instance, of stateless Rohingya people in Bangladesh,87 stateless refugees from Bhutan in Nepal,88 or Black Mauritanian in Senegal.89 According to prima facie determination, individual members of the group are presumed refugees, and as such can benefit from the international protection and assistance provided to them by UNHCR.90 There can be some overlap between stateless persons and refugees but the two classifications are and should remain distinct.91 Indeed, some refugees may also be stateless and some stateless persons may be refugees, but for the great majority of them, this is no longer the case. Indeed, most refugees today are not stateless, and most stateless persons are not refugees.92 UNHCR’s mandates on statelessness and refugees overlap because stateless refugees are protected under the provisions of the 1951 Refugee Convention. 93 Where a stateless person is simultaneously a refugee, UNHCR recommends that each claim should be assessed and both statuses should be explicitly recognized;94 although in practice refugee status is likely to ‘trump’ the status of stateless person as it is more comprehensive.95 Some academics are wary about labeling stateless refugees as stateless (as opposed simply to refugees) because ‘citizenship [as a concept or ‘container’] … is seldom completely empty Médecins Sans Frontières, ‘Bangladesh: Violent Crackdown Fuels Humanitarian Crisis for Unrecognized Rohingya Refugees’, 18 February 2010 – available at www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/article.cfm?id=4270 [last accessed 11.9.2013] 88 UNHCR/WFP Joint Assessment Mission Report, ‘Assistance to the Refugees from Bhutan in Nepal’, March 2013 – this report is available at http://www.wfp.org/content/nepal-unhcr-wfp-jam-assistance-refugees-bhutannepal-march-2013 [last accessed 11.9.2013] 89 IRIN humanitarian news and analysis, ‘Mauritania-Senegal: New hope for long-suffering Mauritanian refugees’ – available at http://www.irinnews.org/report/73371/mauritania-senegal-new-hope-for-long-sufferingmauritanian-refugees [last accessed 11.9.2013] 90 Bonaventure Rutinwa, ‘Prima facie status and refugee protection’, UNHCR New Issues in Refugee Protection Working Paper no.69, October 2002; Matthew Albert, ‘Prima facie determination of refugee status – An overview and its legal foundation’, Refugee Studies Centre Working Paper Series No.55, January 2010. 91 Interparliamentary Union and UNHCR, Nationality and Statelessness: A Handbook for Parliamentarians No 22, 2014, p.11. 92 On the challenges of identifying and counting stateless persons, including mapping exercises, see Office of the UNHCR, The State of the World’s Refugees 2012 – In search of solidarity, OUP 2012, pp.108-9, and Interparliamentary Union and UNHCR, Nationality and Statelessness: A Handbook for Parliamentarians No 22, 2014, p.5. 93 UNGA Resolution 3274 (XXIX), 10 December 1974. See also UNHCR ExCom Conclusion No.78 (XVVI) 1995 and UNGA Resolution 50/152, 9 February 1996, and more generally Interparliamentary Union and UNHCR, Nationality and Statelessness: A Handbook for Parliamentarians No 22, 2014, pp.4445, and UNHCR Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, paras.4, 125-128. In addition, UNHCR Statute includes stateless persons in its definition of refugees, provided statelessness occurred for a reason ‘other than personal convenience’. UN General Assembly, Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 14 December 1950, A/RES/428(V), Article 6A(ii) - available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3628.html [accessed 21 June 2013]. 94 UNHCR Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, para.78, and Interparliamentary Union and UNHCR, Nationality and Statelessness: A Handbook for Parliamentarians No 22, 2014, p.27. 95 This also means that if a stateless refugee were to cease to be a refugee, he or she may retain his or her status as a stateless person. The same is true in cases of complementary form of protection or subsidiary protection. 87 15

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