15 person” in a report on Nationality, Including Statelessness submitted by a Special Rapporteur of the International Law Commission, which read as follows: “Stateless persons in the legal sense of the term are persons who are not considered as nationals by any state according to its law”. The wording used by the Special Rapporteur was also adopted in the British and Australian proposals. This definition clearly referred to de jure stateless persons only, because if a person was only stateless de facto he was still considered a national by a state. The definition also had the disadvantage that it may not have taken into consideration those cases where the government was given latitude in the application of the law, particularly where it was authorized to deprive a person, under certain conditions, of the nationality at its own discretion. The opposition toward the inclusion of de facto stateless persons in the definition of a “stateless person” to be inserted in the Convention came in the main from the British, Yugoslav, German, Belgian, and Norwegian representatives. The British representative argued that the Refugee Convention defined the extent to which the Contracting Parties were willing to accord the benefits of the Convention to persons who, owing to fear of persecution, refused to avail themselves of the protection of their national authorities. The inclusion of all de facto stateless persons under the Protocol (Conventions) would be tantamount to granting certain persons benefits from which they were excluded as 16 refugees. The Belgian representative was most concerned because the inclusion of de facto stateless persons per se would benefit persons who renounced their nationality for 17 personal reasons. On the other hand, most of the representatives to the conference were conscious of the fact that de facto stateless persons were in most instances legally in the same position as de jure stateless persons and required a firm legal status. Thus the Belgian representative was prepared to consider as “stateless persons” those “who invoke reasons recognized as valid by the State in which they are resident for renouncing the 18 protection of the country of which they are nationals”. This would, in fact, grant every state the right to extend the provisions of the Convention to certain de facto stateless persons, such inclusion making them subject to all the provisions of the Convention, including those which go beyond the authority of the state of their residence. Somewhat broader, although within the same “optional” category, was the suggestion of the German representative to include a clause giving the Contracting States the option of granting the benefits accorded to de jure stateless persons to any person who renounced his 19 nationality. The restriction to de jure stateless persons is the formal sense of the word could mean that many persons who were actually regarded as stateless in a certain state under domestic rules might not acquire this status under the Convention when the Convention was acceded to by that state, if they did not fit the de jure test. To alleviate such a situation (and to simplify proof of statelessness, as described below), the Israel representative proposed a definition which consisted of two parts: one a “conservative” (covering all persons who, on the effective date of the Convention, were treated as stateless by a Contracting State) and another a legal (relating to persons who lost their nationality under the operation of the national laws applicable to them). The conference decided to apply the Convention, as a rule, to de jure stateless persons only and to provide the possibility of extending its benefits to de facto stateless persons. The Drafting Committee made several alternative proposals regarding de facto stateless persons all of which were in substance based on the Belgian proposal, viz.: 15 A/CN.4/50 16 SR.3, pp. 2-3. 17 SR.4, p. 3. 18 Belgian proposal concerning the definition of the term "stateless person" E/CONF.17/L.3; cf. also SR.4, p. 2. 19 SR.4, p. 4.