MK (A Child By Her Litigation Friend CAE), R (On the Application O... 5 of 12 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2017/1365.html Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. That is explicit in Part 14 of the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules, HC 395, which applies to those who remain stateless, because they are not entitled to register as citizens; but on behalf of the defendant Mr Brown says in paragraph 8 of his written skeleton that the same applies generally in English law, and so to Schedule 2 of the 1981 Act, where it is not express. That is an important concession, for reasons I shall give in due course. 15. The definition in art 1(1) of the 1954 Convention is as follows: "For the purpose of this Convention, the term 'stateless person' means a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law." 16. There is a considerable amount of authority on the question whether a person is to be regarded as stateless, particularly but not exclusively for the rather different purposes of the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the status of Refugees, where status is determined by reference to a person's nationality or nationalities and only in the case of a person 'not having a nationality' by reference to his country of former habitual residence. A primary question in refugee status determination is whether a person is at risk of persecution in the country, or all the countries, of nationality. One such case was KK v SSHD [2011] UKUT 92 (IAC), where, giving the decision of the Upper Tribunal, and after reviewing a number of decisions from the UK and other countries, I said this at [82]-[83]: "82. In summary, for the purposes of the Refugee Convention, where a person already has a nationality (even if he has no documents to that effect) that is the end of the matter: he is a national of the country concerned. If he is entitled to nationality, subject only to his making an application for it, he is also to be regarded as a national of the country concerned. But if he is not a national and may be refused nationality, he is not to be treated as being a national of the country concerned. Subject to questions as to the "effectiveness" of nationality, the same principle applies to entitlement to a second nationality as to entitlement to a first. 83. We should say that we regard that summary as consistent with authority, including Bradshaw [1994] Imm AR 359, and MA. In both of those cases there is more than a suggestion (in Bradshaw it is stated as a rule) that in order to establish a claim not to have a particular nationality, a person ought to apply, using his or her best endeavours, to obtain nationality of a country with which he or she is associated. But it seems to us that that must be a matter of evidence rather than of legal principle. For example, if the evidence is that nationality will be acquired on application, a decision maker ought to be entitled without more to treat the person as a national of the country in question, for the purposes of the Refugee Convention. If, on the other hand, there is evidence that the grant of nationality is a matter of discretion, it is not easy to see why a refugee claimant should be regarded, to his disadvantage, as having a nationality that he does not possess and may never possess. There may be borderline cases, and we would with respect strongly endorse what was said by Stanley Burnton LJ in MA at [83], as set out above." 17. The final words are a reference to the following observation of Stanley Burnton LJ: "Refugee status is not a matter of choice. A person cannot be entitled to refugee status solely because he or she refuses to make an application to her Embassy, or refuses or fails to take reasonable steps to obtain recognition and evidence of her nationality." 18. These authorities are not precisely on the issue raised in this claim, but on an apparently identical issue in proceedings with similarly international implications. Direct reference to the 1954 Statelessness Convention is found in R v SSHD ex parte Bradshaw [1994] Imm AR 359, a decision of Lord MacLean in the Outer House. At 366-7 he said this: "[I]t seems to me that before a person can be said to be stateless in terms of the 20/05/2021, 15:49