Category C [Consulate denial I (Refugees)] Persons unable to have their birth registered or a passport issued, etc., due to rejection by relevant consular authorities (or inability to pursue such assistance) for refugee related reasons (Sample cases from Myanmar, Cameroon, and China) Category C of statelessness or the risk of statelessness is caused when an individual, who is a refugee under the 1951 Refugee Convention, is unable to have his or her birth registered or passport issued, etc., by the authorities of his or her country of origin such as at the consulate located in Japan. < Case 4 > considers Myanmar refugees who, under the Myamarese government’s policy regarding the loss of nationality, are unable to register their nationality or obtain passports even after the change of circumstances in Myanmar. In < Case 5 >, an asylum seeker from Cameroon requested the Consulate Section of the Embassy of Cameroon in Japan to reissue her passport due to the loss of her previous one. Her request was denied for the reason that she was applying for asylum, and furthermore the birth registration of her child was also denied. In < Case 6 >, an asylum seeker from China applied for renewal of his passport, which was about to expire, at the Consulate Section of the Embassy of China in Japan. The passport was invalidated immediately on site. 1. Introduction According to the Refugee Convention, a refugee is a person who, “owing to wellfounded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” As apparent from the definition above, refugees and asylum seekers are generally highly unlikely to be able to avail themselves of diplomatic and consular protection as nationals, even though they are nationals of their respective countries of origin. Even if refugees and asylum seekers, after fleeing from their country of origin, give birth to children in the country of asylum, they might be likely to hesitate to voluntarily get in touch with the embassy or consulate of their country of origin for fear of the risk of persecution. As a result, such children remain unregistered at birth with their country of origin and may, depending on the circumstances of individual cases, be at risk of becoming stateless. Moreover, even at a point when refugees and asylum seekers recognize the situation in their country of origin to have improved, there are cases where they have been denied the issuance of passports or birth registrations of children, upon visiting the embassy or consulate in Japan and applying for such procedures. 62