Facilitated Naturalization Of Stateless Persons 205 However, it is crucial to ask from which moment the national legislation starts to count towards this waiting period. The general practice is that ‘for the stateless, or any non-national, to benefit from a right to (facilitated) naturalization, they must first establish lawful and habitual residence on the territory of the State’.3 The right of access to lawful and habitual residence for stateless persons is not provided for under the 1954 Convention, nor is it decisively settled in any human rights instruments; therefore it raises several issues, which have to be considered. Firstly, it is important to realize that even if a waiting period for naturalization as such is relatively short, a stateless person may not be able to meet requirements for (lawful and habitual) residence. This means that this period will never start to count and a stateless person will not practically have access to such a procedure. Even more importantly, it may be the case that States require a certain period of time to lapse before a person is able to establish their lawful and habitual residence. Such a period then has to be added to the waiting period required for naturalization to create an accurate picture of the time within which a person may be naturalized. International law, of course, does not prevent States from offering access to (facilitated) naturalization also to unlawfully present stateless persons on a voluntary basis. The general formulation of article 32 of the 1954 Convention does provide space for such interpretation, but without further guidelines, it is highly unlikely that States would do so.4 What makes the determination of the waiting period even more complicated, compared to facilitated naturalization of refugees for example, is the fact that most States have not yet introduced determination procedures for statelessness, while many of them do already have functioning asylum procedures. According to the guidelines issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the standard residence requirement for facilitated naturalization of refugees should be five years, while this period should, where relevant, include also periods spent in the country whilst asylum applications are under consideration.5 This could be the appropriate standard also in the context of statelessness where a determination procedure for statelessness is in place. 3 Ibid 369. 4 Ibid 370. 5 UNHCR, Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill, Parliamentary Briefing, House of Lords Second Reading (2009), para 6 <http://www.unhcr.org.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/BCI _Bill_Lords_Second_Reading_Brief.pdf> accessed 13 October 2013. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 203-211