1. MAKING EFFECTIVE USE OF UN HUMAN RIGHTS MECHANISMS TO SOLVE STATELESSNESS (ICERD).5 While the UN Statelessness Conventions6 themselves have only a light supervisory regime, these human rights treaties benefit from dedicated treaty bodies capable of influencing doctrine and State practice. Implementation of human rights obligations is also reviewed by UN Member States through the UPR. As of August 2016, human rights treaties also generally had a higher number of States Parties than the Statelessness Conventions. For all of these reasons, human rights law and practice holds opportunities for new developments relating to the right to nationality. To date statelessness itself has not featured very prominently in human rights discourse or international practice, and as “rights holders” stateless persons have been less visible in the work of the Human Rights Council and human rights treaty bodies than many other groups (such as children, women, racial and religious minorities, indigenous persons, political dissidents, persons with disabilities, migrants and LGBTI persons).7 “Statelessness” as a thematic topic is, however, beginning to be discussed more regularly by UN human rights mechanisms, civil society groups and academic institutions thanks in part to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)’s 2014 launch of the Campaign to End Statelessness by 2024. Notably, in 2016 the Human Rights Council passed by consensus a resolution on the right to a nationality which was co-sponsored by a remarkable 111 States. This and certain other developments discussed in this chapter, including the creation of a UN Member State “Friends of the Campaign to End Statelessness” group, may signal the beginning of a shift towards consistent attention to statelessness. It is difficult to make clear predictions given the fluidity of the UN human rights environment, however, and the data presented in this chapter can necessarily only offer a kind of “snapshot” of practice during a limited period of time. 5 6 7 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 7 March 1966, entry into force 4 January 1969, 660 UNTS 195, Art. 5. Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, 28 September 1954, entry into force 6 June 1960, 360 UNTS 117 (1954 Statelessness Convention) and Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, 30 August 1961, entry into force 13 December 1975, 989 UNTS 175 (1961 Statelessness Convention). Of course there is significant overlap between many of these groups and stateless persons, but as this is also true among these groups, the relative absence of stateless persons as a group in current human rights practice is notable. 14