Chapter 2. Europe and Statelessness shall have the nationality of the said state.372 The other protocol only entered into force in 2004 and is therefore not relevant here, as it could – from a legal perspective – not really contribute to addressing statelessness after World War I. Overall, the protocols, even if they were specifically directed at statelessness, were much less significant to the issue than the 1930 Hague Convention. The 1930 Hague Convention did not deal with the causes of mass statelessness after World War I: as we saw in chapter 1, it addressed statelessness where it was a consequence of nationality issues relating to birth and marriage. Furthermore, the treaty does not mention stateless refugees at all. The Convention was an expression of the conviction of states “that it is in the general interest of the international community to secure that all its members should recognise that every person should have a nationality” and an attempt directed towards “the abolition of all cases (…) of statelessness”, which was aware that it was at the time not possible to find an immediate and “uniform solution of all the above-mentioned problems”.373 Nonetheless, the 1930 Hague Convention was a great achievement, in particular because is provided that even though it is for each state to determine under its own law who are its nationals, this law shall only be recognized by other states in so far as it is consistent with international conventions, international custom, and the principles of law generally acknowledged with regard to nationality.374 Furthermore, even if it did not have direct implications for stateless refugees, the Convention was significant because it was the first legal instrument on matters of nationality of a general nature.375 The importance and continuing relevance of the 1930 Hague Convention to matters of nationality and statelessness is underlined by contemporary commentators. According to Carol Batchelor, the Convention is one of “the primary international instruments which serve as reference points for the principles relating to the right to a nationality and the problem of statelessness”.376 Indeed, “the adoption of the 1930 Hague Convention heralded the onset of a gradual trend towards the acceptance of limitations to the exclusive competence of states” in nationality matters.377 In conclusion, for the emergence of statelessness in Europe, the devastating Great War – World War I – is the point in history that marks the occurrence of the issue for the first time on a large scale. This was caused by various events, such as the War itself that created large numbers of refugees, as well as the response to the displacement, and the collapse of empires. Combined with the exclusion of ethnic minorities and states denying or depriving nationality of undesirable people for various reasons, statelessness 372 373 374 375 376 377 Art 1 Protocol relating to a Certain Case of Statelessness (adopted 12 April 1930, entered into force 1 July 1937) 179 LTS 115. Preamble 1930 Hague Convention. Art 1 1930 Hague Convention. Marc Vishniak, ‘The Legal Status of Stateless Persons’ in AG Duker (ed), Pamphlet Series: Jews and the Post-War World (No. 6, American Jewish Committee 1945) 41. Carol A Batchelor, ‘Statelessness and the Problem of Resolving Nationality Status’ (1998) 10 International Journal of Refugee Law 156, 158. Laura van Waas, Nationality Matters. Statelessness under International Law (School of Human Rights Research Series, Vol 29; Intersentia 2008) 38. Intersentia 69