464 Melbourne University Law Review [Vol 40:456 there was a genuine link between an individual and the state (and not just the accident of where someone happened to be born).40 The UK representative recommended that ‘[t]he Conference should attempt to steer a middle course by drafting a convention which would secure many ratifications and at the same time represent an appreciable improvement in the lot of stateless persons.’41 The compromise finally reached enabled states to choose whether to grant nationality at birth by the operation of law, or upon an application being lodged as prescribed by national law. It also permitted states to retain the right to deprive someone of nationality in very limited, defined circumstances, provided that such an intention was notified at the time of signature, ratification or accession. The purpose of the 1961 Convention, as set out in its Preamble, is thus ‘to reduce statelessness by international agreement’. Although, as an international instrument, it cannot bestow nationality on an individual directly,42 it imposes positive responsibilities on states to confer nationality in certain circumstances, including in relation to persons ‘born in [their] territory who would otherwise be stateless.’43 It also prohibits the withdrawal or deprivation of nationality in various situations where this would render a person stateless.44 As Guy S Goodwin-Gill has observed: One of the most significant elements in the 1961 Convention is the fact that it imposes positive obligations on States to grant nationality in certain circumstances, by contrast with the essentially negative obligations contained in the [earlier] Convention on Certain Questions relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, adopted in the Hague in 1930.45 40 Goodwin-Gill, Introductory Note: Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, above n 28, citing ‘Summary Records of the Fourth Session (4 June -- 8 August 1952)’ [1952] I Yearbook of the International Law Commission 1, 100--42, 190--1, 244, 251--2. See also Weis, ‘Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness’, above n 1, 1077. 41 Summary Record of the Second Plenary Meeting, UN Doc A/CONF.9/SR.2, 2. 42 Batchelor, ‘Statelessness and the Problem of Resolving Nationality Status’, above n 1, 158. 43 1961 Convention art 1(1). 44 Ibid art 8. The 1961 Convention also restricts states’ capacity to deprive individuals of their nationality where there is a change in personal status such as marriage (art 5), where a person’s loss of nationality would otherwise lead to the loss of nationality by that person’s spouse or child (art 6), and where the state would otherwise permit renunciation of nationality (art 7). In each case, the 1961 Convention requires that the relevant person possess or is able to acquire another nationality: see van Waas, Nationality Matters, above n 15, 44. 45 Goodwin-Gill, Introductory Note: Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, above n 28 (emphasis in original). On the 1930 instrument see Weis, ‘Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness’, above n 1, 1073--4.