Committee to revise the drafts, based on comments from various states and discussions in the Council. At the same time, it recommended the General Assembly to approve the draft. The General Assembly decided to convene a conference of plenipotentiaries in Geneva to examine and adopt these draft instruments.41 Worthy of note was that the Economic and Social Council presented the Ad Hoc Committee with a single draft dealing with both refugees and stateless persons. This was because the position of stateless persons was considered similar to refugees as both lacked the protection and assistance of the State. However, the Ad Hoc Committee decided to separate the two, giving refugees the priority. This has been said to be a result of the urgency of the refugee problem.42 The Committee resolved to adopt the draft Refugee Convention, which had largely adopted recommendations in the 1949 U.N. Report, and a draft Protocol, which sought to apply the Refugee Convention mutatis mutandis to stateless persons who were not refugees. The drafters of the Protocol had thought of it as an appendix to the Refugee Convention rather than as an independent document. The elimination of statelessness was referred back to the Economic and Social Council and the ILC was asked to draw another document concerning this matter.43 The U.N. Conference on Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons convened from July 2 to 25, 1951. The discussion focused on the above draft Convention and Protocol prepared by the Ad Hoc Committee, the preamble compiled by the Economic and Social Council, and a draft of Convention Article 1 defining refugees recommended by the General Assembly. Representatives from 26 countries, with two countries participating as observers, voted unanimously 24-0 to adopt the Refugee Convention. However, the Conference referred the Draft Protocol back to the appropriate organs of the U.N. for further study.44 With the entry into force of the Refugee Convention on April 22, 1954, the Economic and Social Council summoned the Second Conference of Plenipotentiaries between 41 GA Res.429(V), 14 Dec. 1950. See also Robinson, supra note 9, part one. See Batchelor, supra note 16, p.243. In the political framework of the Cold War, Hathaway states that refugees were given priority to stateless persons to advance “sinister political purposes” of Western states. Hathaway, J., “A Reconsideration of the Underlying Premise of Refugee Law,” Harvard International Law Journal, Vol.31 (1990), pp.145-48. 43 See Batchelor, supra note 16, p.244. 44 UN Doc.A/1913, 15 October 1951, p.1. 42 20