the Secretary General decide on the date and venue for the conclusion of this treaty.58 In 1959, 35 countries assembled in Geneva for the U.N. Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Elimination of Reduction of Future Statelessness to discuss the ILC draft for the reduction of statelessness.59 However, since an agreement could not be reached about the confiscation of nationality, it was reconvened in 1961. After more than ten years since the first draft was compiled, 30 countries, including Japan, signed the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.60 Fourteen years hence, the Convention entered into force on December 13, 1975. The work of the ILC was seen as technical legal work, a continuation of the efforts initiated in the 1930 Hague Conference for the Codification of International Law Codification Conference in the field of nationality. The goal was to adopt a convention that could harmonize the nationality legislation of countries that used varying means to determine a citizen. Delegates expressed the opinion that de facto and de jure stateless persons should be able to benefit equally from the Convention, but the final draft limited application to de jure stateless persons. The erroneous notion that equated de facto stateless persons with refugees prevailed again.61 The Convention reflects a commitment to reduce statelessness. Its most important feature lies in granting nationality at the time of birth when the person would otherwise be legally stateless. It also prevents statelessness by obligating states to not deprive a person of a nationality where it would render him legally stateless. Detailed provisions stipulate how nationality can be provided in accordance with jus soli and sanguinis, as well as residency in the signatory states (Articles 1 to 4). It also obligates State parties to avoid statelessness for its residents through loss and renunciation of nationality, denationalization and transfer of territory. Cordova, Special Rapporteur, A/Cn.4/64, Extract from the Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1953, vol. II Part I and II. 58 UN GA Res.896 (IX), 4 December 1954. 59 The ambitious Convention on Elimination of Statelessness never went beyond the status of a draft. Batchelor, supra note 3, pp.250, n.89; Chan, supra note 36, p.4. 60 See Weis, supra note 4, pp.1073-96; Collection of International Instruments and Other Legal Texts Concerning Refugees and Displaced Persons, supra note 48, pp.107-8. 61 Batchelor, supra note 16, pp. 251-52. The Conference also recommended that de facto stateless persons should be treated as equally as possible with de jure stateless persons, and be enabled to acquire an effective nationality. Collection of International Instruments and Other Legal Texts Concerning Refugees and Displaced Persons, supra note 48, p.110. 25