Chapter 2. Europe and Statelessness treatment of refugees and stateless non-refugees.407 Eventually, the Committee prepared a Draft Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and a Draft Protocol Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons thereto, which led to the adoption of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1951. “This set the refugee and the stateless person, who had until then been cast together in the eyes of the international community, on diverging paths – a move which has had far-reaching consequences for the protection of the stateless to this day”.408 In 1954, at a second conference of plenipotentiaries, it was decided that the Draft Protocol Relating to the Status would become a convention: the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.409 The reasoning behind a separate treaty, instead of a protocol to the 1951 Convention, was to allow states to accede to an instrument for the protection of stateless people without having to become a state party to the Refugee Convention first.410 The other statelessness convention, the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, was drafted against the background of the existing 1930 Hague Convention and the newly proclaimed right to a nationality in the UDHR.411 After preliminary work by the ILC, a Conference took place in 1959 to discuss the draft Convention on the Reduction of Future Statelessness as prepared by the ILC.412 However, negotiations were difficult and states were unable to come to an agreement, in particular as regards deprivation of nationality.413 The Conference on this matter was therefore reconvened in 1961, where the 1961 Convention was eventually adopted. When considering all of this together, the conclusion can only be that large-scale denationalization and displacement had led to statelessness only further increasing after World War I and during World War II. At the same time, the continent had witnessed such atrocities that there was a need also for further responses in that regard. The confrontation with all those people who were left displaced, with or without a nationality, led states to adopt specific treaties on refugees and stateless people, as well as recognize the need to legally distinguish them from each other. Indeed, the period after the war included the adoption of the Statelessness Conventions to specifically respond to the issue of statelessness, as well as the establishment of UNHCR. Furthermore, as a response to inhumanity witnessed during the war, we saw the genesis of modern human rights treaties. However, the need to (legally) address the dire situation after the 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 Guy S Goodwin-Gill, ‘The Rights of Refugees and Stateless Persons’ in K P Saksena (ed), Human Rights Perspective & Challenges (in 1990 and Beyond) (World Congress on Human Rights, Lancers Books 1994) 378–401, 381. Laura van Waas, ‘The UN Statelessness Conventions’ in Alice Edwards & Laura van Waas (eds), Nationality and Statelessness under International Law (Cambridge University Press 2014) 67. On the 1951 Convention and 1954 Convention and the draft ing process see also Michelle Foster & Hélène Lambert, International Refugee Law and the Protection of Stateless Persons (Oxford University Press 2019) 31–46. Laura van Waas, ‘The UN Statelessness Conventions’ in Alice Edwards & Laura van Waas (eds), Nationality and Statelessness under International Law (Cambridge University Press 2014) 68. Ibid, 70. Paul Weis, Nationality and Statelessness in International Law (2nd ed, Sijthoff & Noordhoff International Publishers 1979) 166. Ibid, 166. Intersentia 75