Introduction A Brief History of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons Background Immediately following World War II, the international community and the fledgling United Nations proposed new international agreements to address the status of refugees and stateless persons. But the status of refugees was, quite literally, a higher priority than that of stateless persons on the international community’s agenda.1 In 1948, the UN Economic and Social Council charged the Secretary General to study statelessness and to recommend how the United Nations could better protect stateless people.2 In 1949, the United Nations released the resulting study, “A Study on Statelessness,”3 and the Council appointed a committee to consider an international instrument addressing the situation of refugees and stateless persons.4 That committee, the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Refugees and Stateless Persons, convened twice in 1950 and compiled two draft international instruments that would improve the status of refugees and stateless persons.5 First, the Ad Hoc Committee drafted a convention that would set out the definition of a refugee and outline the rights associated with refugee status. Second, the Ad Hoc Committee drafted a protocol on statelessness that would extend to stateless persons some of the substantive protections from the refugee convention.6 The UN General Assembly advanced these two draft instruments to the 1951 Conference of Plenipotentiaries, which revised and signed the Ad Hoc Committee’s draft refugee convention. The resulting agreement is now known as the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (“1951 Refugee Convention”). The 1950 Ad Hoc Committee’s draft statelessness protocol had incorporated provisions See, e.g., UN Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons, Provisional Agenda of Conference to Open at Geneva on Monday, 28 May 1951, at 11 a.m., 9 March 1951, A/CONF.2/2, http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae68ce08.html. 2 Resolution 116 (VI) (D). 3 UN Ad Hoc Committee on Refugees and Stateless Persons, A Study of Statelessness, 1 August 1949, E/1112; E/1112/Add.1, https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae68c2d0.html. 4 Resolution 248 (IX) (B). 5 UN Ad Hoc Committee on Refugees and Stateless Persons, Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Refugees and Stateless Persons, Second Session, Annex II, 25 August 1950, E/AC.32/8;E/1850, http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae68c248.html. 6 Id. 1 vii Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4037774