THE PROBLEM OF STATELESSNESS IN UKRAINE AND THE WAYS OF ADDRESSING IT Hence, foreigners’ rights and freedoms are currently not consolidated in one legislative act. Such persons’ rights in Ukraine are restricted by subordinate regulations, which is in conflict with the Constitution of Ukraine, which states that all people are free and have equal rights. Although the mechanism to secure that those stateless persons, who were documented, have access to their rights and freedoms is still not provided by the law of Ukraine, those persons who were not documented at all are in an even worse situation. The question for the latter is not just about the access to the same rights and freedoms granted to Ukrainian citizens, but to the basic rights, including those which should be available according to the Constitution of Ukraine to all persons, regardless of their citizenship. Special attention should be paid to the definition of the very notion of a “stateless person” in Article 1 of the Law of Ukraine on Citizenship of Ukraine and Article 1 of the Law on Legal Status of Foreigners and Stateless Persons. Their conformity with the term “stateless person” defined in Article 1(1) of the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons6 is questionable. Why? The key element in the definition enshrined in the 1954 Convention is a component that was, unfortunately, missed out from the translation of the definition into Ukrainian and Russian. In particular, in the English version a stateless person is defined by the Convention as follows: “1. For the purpose of this Convention, the term “stateless person” means a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”. However, the words “the operation of…” were not given proper attention in the translation into Ukrainian and Russian. The current Ukrainian text in both Laws referred to above is as follows: “1. For the purpose of this Convention, the term “stateless person” means a person who is not considered as a national by any State under its law”. As a consequence of such incorrect translation, some public authorities of the Contracting States use a specific categorization of stateless persons into those de facto and those de jure, opposing them to each other and thereby exposing the so-called de facto stateless persons to the threat of being excluded from the scope of the 1954 Convention. It is such an approach to interpretation of the Convention that made the modern doctrine abandon the use of the terms “de facto stateless person” and “de jure stateless person” at all. Instead, the doctrine suggests using the terms “stateless person” and “person at risk of statelessness” (The Concept of Stateless Persons under International Law. Summary Conclusions by the Expert meeting organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Prato, Italy, 27-28 May 2010). This is ua/laws/show/3773-17 6 See http://zakon2.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/995_232 10