Part I. Introduction and Context In light of UNHCR’s global mandate to address statelessness, its work regarding the Statelessness Conventions150 and its #IBELONG Campaign to end statelessness by 2024151, this organization and its output continue to be relevant to preventing and solving statelessness globally. With regard to the question of the stateless and refugees, it should furthermore be noted that in 1949, a separate agency was founded to implement relief and works programs for Palestinian refugees152: UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).153 Palestinians, one of the large groups of stateless people in the world, are excluded from the international protection regime for refugees and the stateless as described above and in chapter 2. This because Palestinians fall under the mandate of UNRWA and are therefore separately receiving protection and assistance from the UN as described in Article 1(2)(i) of the 1954 Convention. UN human rights treaties (1965–2006) At UN level, a number of human rights treaties have been adopted that contain provisions of relevance to preventing and solving statelessness. All of the UN human rights treaties considered here, have dedicated ‘treaty bodies’ (Committees), in which experts monitor the implementation of the standards from the treaties by the states parties. These treaty bodies can make general recommendations or comments and/ or concluding observations and recommendations to states – a form of ‘soft law’ – and can sometimes, under certain conditions, consider individual complaints or communications from individuals.154 As some examples below demonstrate, treaty bodies have also made relevant contributions to guiding standard-setting at the international level on preventing and solving statelessness.155 In 1965, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) was adopted.156 In the spirit of every human being’s equal dignity and rights, this treaty obliges states to enact policies to eliminate racial discrimination, which includes discrimination based on descent, race, national or 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 34 Ie the 1954 Convention and the 1961 Convention. UNHCR, ‘#IBelong Campaign’, <https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/> accessed 4 September 2021. See also UNHCR, ‘Global Action Plan to End Statelessness’ (4 November 2014) <www.unhcr.org/ statelesscampaign2014/Global-Action-Plan-eng.pdf> accessed 4 September 2021. On the Palestinians see also Michal Baer, ‘The Palestinian People: Ambiguities of Citizenship’ in Rhoda E Howard-Hassmann & Margaret Walton-Roberts (eds) The Human Right to Citizenship. A Slippery Concept (University of Pennsylvania Press 2015) 45–61. UNGA Res 302 (IV) (8 December 1949) UN Doc A/RES/302 (IV). See also Helen Keller & Geir Ulfstein, UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies. Law and Legitimacy (Cambridge University Press 2012). Recommendations made by UN treaty bodies and monitoring mechanisms that are relevant to statelessness and nationality can be explored easily using the ISI Database on Statelessness & Human Rights <https://database.institutesi.org> accessed 4 September 2021. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (adopted 21 December 1965, entered into force 4 January 1969) 660 UNTS 195 (ICERD). Intersentia