2016] The Prevention and Reduction of Statelessness in Australia 461 I II T H E I N T E R NAT I O NA L L E G A L F R A M E WO R K A N D A U S T R A L IA’ S O B L I G AT I O N S While ‘[e]veryone has the right to a nationality’ under international human rights law,20 states do not have a corresponding duty to confer nationality, other than on certain children.21 It is therefore ‘for each State to determine under its own law who are its nationals.’22 As Weis notes, from the perspective of international law, ‘the stateless person is an anomaly, nationality still being the principal link between the individual and the Law of Nations.’23 The two international treaties on statelessness are the 1954 Convention and the 1961 Convention. As detailed above, the 1954 Convention defines a ‘stateless person’ in art 1(1) as ‘a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’,24 while the remainder of the treaty sets out the legal status of stateless persons.25 It is designed to ensure that 20 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, GA Res 217A (III), UN GAOR, 3rd sess, 183rd plen mtg, UN Doc A/810 (10 December 1948) art 15(1) (‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’). 21 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature 16 December 1966, 999 UNTS 171 (entered into force 23 March 1976) art 24(3) (‘ICCPR’) provides only that: ‘Every child has the right to acquire a nationality.’ This does not necessarily require states to grant nationality to every child born in their territory, since they may have the right to another nationality, but it does require them to confer nationality on children who would otherwise be stateless: Human Rights Committee, ‘General Comment No 17: Article 24 (Rights of the Child)’, in Compilation of General Comments and General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, UN Doc HRI/GEN/1/Rev.9 (27 May 2008) vol 1, 193, 195 [8]; Sarah Joseph and Melissa Castan, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Cases, Materials, and Commentary (Oxford University Press, 3rd ed, 2013) 726. See also Convention on the Rights of the Child, opened for signature 20 November 1989, 1577 UNTS 3 (entered into force 2 September 1990) art 7 (‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’). 22 Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, opened for signature 12 April 1930, 179 LNTS 89 (entered into force 1 July 1937) art 1. 23 Weis, ‘Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness’, above n 1, 1073. As Batchelor notes, nationality ‘serves as a basis for certain rights, including the State’s right to grant diplomatic protection and representation of the individual on the international level’: Batchelor, ‘Statelessness and the Problem of Resolving Nationality Status’, above n 1, 159--60. 24 Nationality ‘refer[s] to a legal bond between an individual and a State’: Carol Batchelor, ‘The 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons: Implementation within the European Union Member States and Recommendations for Harmonization’ (2005) 22(2) Refuge 31, 36. For the purposes of this article, the terms ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ are used interchangeably. 25 While the 1954 Convention does not technically require that a person be outside their country, the rights regime is modelled on that contained in the 1951 Refugee Convention and thus appears to assume that this is the case in conditioning rights to be delivered at the same level as aliens or most favoured nationals in some cases and of citizens in others.