entitlement to nationality by birth.107 Article 24(3) has also been interpreted to require a state party to the treaty to confer its nationality on stateless children born or found within its territory; this rule is considered the chief protection against inherited statelessness under international law.108 The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons together provide a “framework that grants a minimum of rights and protection to stateless persons and fights against the spread of statelessness worldwide.”109 The 1961 Convention “aimed to respond to the far too extensive discretion of states that enabled them to denationalize citizens during World War II.”110 Deprivation of nationality is covered in Article 8. That provision, a compromise measure reflecting the variation in national law at the time of the convention’s negotiation and adoption, allows states to exercise deprivation powers only in certain strictly limited circumstances, including in cases in which nationality was obtained by fraud, with additional safeguards required as outlined in the previous section. In order to prevent statelessness, states must understand what it is and be able to identify when an individual is at risk of becoming—or is in fact already—stateless. Statelessness is a mixed question of law and fact and must be determined not only on the basis of legal provisions but also the practice of competent state authorities.111 Making a determination that has implications of such magnitude for the affected individual requires specialized skills and training and should not be delegated to low-level state actors who may lack adequate resources. Procedural Protections Where a state claims that an individual is a non-national, or seeks to deprive nationality allegedly acquired through of fraud, minimum standards of due process must be followed,112 “including the right to challenge the allegation that a person is in fact a foreigner.”113 In practice, citizenship and denationalization processes are often complicated by low-quality documents and inadequate official record keeping. This can make it especially hard to guarantee due process. Guidance by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) issued in 2013 (known as the Tunis Conclusions), addresses this concern. The Tunis Conclusions note that fraud may be made impossible to prove (or to refute) to an acceptable standard given possible administrative shortcomings on the part of the state in registering and documenting identity: Another area of concern is the often poor quality of “feeder” or supporting documents from civil registration systems and other administrative registries in many countries which serve as proof for issuance of identity documents and passports. These documents often contain minor errors or discrepancies relating to the identity of individuals. These realities need to be taken into account in assessing cases of alleged misrepresentation or fraud.114 I. History and Context 33