(statelessness) or completely full’.96 A further compelling argument has been made that to identify refugees as stateless can weaken refugees’ right to return to their country of origin in safety and in dignity, and undermine claims against their States of origin for the redress of their rights as citizens, for instance, hold accountable their state of origin for the crimes that caused their displacement or secure the restitution of lost property.97 This paper focuses on this overlap: when is a stateless person a refugee under Article 1A(2) of the Refugee Convention? International law on the matter is surprisingly clear, even if at times States have sought to argue its obscurity. Article 1 of the 1951 Refugee Convention (with the omitted dateline in Article I of the 1967 Protocol) defines a refugee as any person who owing to well-founded of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. It is evident from this definition that a refugee can be a national (or not) of a country; nationality is irrelevant ‘in its legal sense, to the quality of being a refugee’. 98 UNHCR’s position confirms this interpretation. 99 The key points are that in the case of stateless refugees, the words ‘the country of nationality’ in Article 1A(2) Refugee Convention are replaced by ‘the country of his former habitual residence’ and the expression ‘unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country’ is replaced by ‘unwilling to return to it’. The meaning of one’s ‘former habitual residence’ is generally construed by reference ‘to the length and character of the time a refugee spent in a country’,100 independently of whether residence was lawful.101 In cases of more than one country of former habitual residence, the Audrey Macklin, ‘Who Is the Citizens’ Other? Considering the Heft of Citizenship’, 8 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 2007, pp.333-366, at 337. 97 Megan Bradley, ‘Rethinking refugeehood: statelessness, repatriation, and refugee agency’, Review of International Studies 40(1) 2914, 101-123, at p.109. 98 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. On the meaning of the semicolon in Article 1A(2), see section 4.1 supra. 99 UNHCR Handbook, paras.101-105. 100 It is defined in the UNHCR Handbook, para.103, as ‘the country in which he had resided and where he had suffered or fears he would suffer persecution if he returned’. See, Revenko v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2001] QB 601, UK Court of Appeal, Pill LJ, at p.617; YL (Nationality), UKIAT 2003, para.17; United States Court of Appeal, 6th circuit, El Assadi v Holder, No.09-4193, 25 April 2011, p.2. See also for a full discussion of what ‘country of former habitual residence’ means in the academic literature: NZ RSAA Refugee Appeal No. 1/92 Re SA, 30 April 1992. 101 German Federal Administrative Court, 26 February 2009, 10C 50.07. 96 16