RAMADAN v. MALTA JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINION 29 enjoy the right to a nationality have greater access to the enjoyment of various other human rights.”19 3. States do not therefore have absolute sovereignty to deny citizenship to any person for any reason, as is also crystal-clear from a purposeful reading of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (the 1954 Convention)20 and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (the 1961 Convention)21. The 1954 Convention was adopted on 28 September 1954 and entered into force on 6 June 1960. It does not establish a right for stateless persons to acquire the nationality of a State. However, Article 32 of the 1954 Convention requires that States should facilitate the assimilation and naturalisation of stateless persons, notably, by expediting naturalisation proceedings and reducing the relevant charges and costs. The final act of the 1954 Convention recommends that each Contracting State, when it recognises as valid the reasons for which a person has renounced the protection of the State of which he is a national, consider sympathetically the possibility of according that person the treatment which the Convention accords to stateless persons. This statement provides for the possibility of extending the protection of the 1954 Convention to a certain category of de facto stateless persons. The major weakness of the 1954 Convention consists in the fact that it only affords protection to the de jure stateless persons and does not have a comprehensive non-discrimination provision. This is compounded by the fact that it does not offer guidance as to the procedures to be used to identify stateless persons, which may lead to failure to recognise stateless persons and result in their inability to effectively enjoy the rights emanating from the 1954 Convention. While it does offer certain guarantees against expulsion and acknowledges the right to re-enter on the basis of a Convention travel document, on the condition of lawful presence in the country, the 1954 Convention does not regulate the right to enter a State, thereby leaving Contracting Parties free to refuse, detain or expel any stateless person seeking access to their soil without the proper authorisation. Finally, the absence of a formalised procedure in place for supervising the full implementation of the 1954 Convention or for the receipt of individual complaints by stateless persons also weakens the protection afforded to these persons. In this respect it must be mentioned that, through a series of UN General Assembly Resolutions, the UNHCR has acquired a 19. UN Human Rights Council, Impact of the arbitrary deprivation of nationality on the enjoyment of the rights of children concerned, and existing laws and practices on accessibility for children to acquire nationality, inter alia, of the country in which they are born, if they otherwise would be stateless, 16 December 2015, A/HRC/31/29, para. 27. 20. The Convention has 88 parties, not including Malta. 21. The Convention has 67 parties, not including Malta.