462 Melbourne University Law Review [Vol 40:456 ‘those who find themselves stateless need not be consigned to a life without dignity and security.’26 Most stateless persons reside within the country of their birth or longterm residence.27 As such, the answer to their predicament is more appropriately found not in formal recognition as ‘stateless persons’, but rather through the opportunity to acquire or confirm the nationality to which they have links (for example, through the reform of nationality laws).28 When the Ad Hoc Committee on Statelessness and Related Problems met in New York in 1950 to consider the desirability of a new treaty on the international status of refugees and stateless persons and ways to eliminate future statelessness,29 the latter was separated out from the more urgent question of what legal status stateless persons should have.30 Eliminating statelessness was regarded as an issue that required international cooperation and the adoption of treaties, and since the Ad Hoc Committee had limited time and resources, it decided to transfer this task to the International Law Commission (‘ILC’) which was already seized with the question of nationality, including statelessness.31 In due course, the United Nations (‘UN’) General Assembly expressed its desire for an international conference to be convened so that a treaty might be concluded.32 Accordingly, the UN Conference on the Elimination or Reduction of Future Statelessness met in 1959 and 1961 to formulate a treaty on this subject. As Batchelor notes, its objective was to fill ‘gaps created by conflicts of law.’33 26 UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, above n 10, 1. 27 Achiron and Govil, above n 11, 3, 11; Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, The World’s Stateless (2014) 21. 28 ‘Statelessness was seen as ‘‘undesirable’’ from the perspective of orderly international relations, for every individual should be ‘‘attributed to some State’’; and it was also undesirable for the individual, because of its ‘‘precariousness’’’: Guy S Goodwin-Gill, Introductory Note: Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (2017) United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law <http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/crs/crs.html>. 29 ESC Res 248 (IX) (B), UN ESCOR, 9th sess, Supp No 1, UN Doc E/1553/Corr.1 (8 December 1949, adopted 8 August 1949) 60--1. 30 Goodwin-Gill, Introductory Note: Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, above n 28. For a detailed history see Weis, ‘Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness’, above n 1, 1073--80. 31 Goodwin-Gill, Introductory Note: Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, above n 28; Carol A Batchelor, ‘Stateless Persons: Some Gaps in International Protection’ (1995) 7 International Journal of Refugee Law 232, 243--4, 249. 32 Goodwin-Gill, Introductory Note: Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, above n 28; Batchelor, ‘Stateless Persons’, above n 31, 250. 33 Batchelor, ‘Stateless Persons’, above n 31, 257.