Why Union Law Can And Should Protect Stateless Persons 107 persons need legal mechanisms that enable them to build their lives without a nationality. This is exactly the purpose of the ‘protection norms’ on statelessness that were developed in the 1954 Convention. The 1954 Convention guarantees a variety of rights for stateless persons who find themselves under the jurisdiction of a State Party. Some of these rights are guaranteed to any stateless person who is present on the territory of a State Party, such as the right to identity documents,16 the right of access to courts,17 and the right to primary education.18 The enjoyment of other rights is dependent on whether the person has legal residence or whether the State Party is his or her place of habitual residence.19 These concern inter alia the right to work (Art. 17), the right to social security benefits (Art. 24) and the right to obtain travel documents (Art. 28). Access to other rights may be made conditional on the same requirements as applied to foreigners generally,20 for example the right to move freely within the territory of the state (Art. 26). And some rights need to be provided on par with nationals, such as the freedom of religion (Art. 4). The 1954 Convention leaves a number of issues unsettled however, which helps explaining why the treatment of stateless persons varies considerably amongst State Parties. The first issue concerns the interpretation of certain terms in the definition of ‘stateless person’ in the 1954 Convention. Article 1(1) of the Convention defines a stateless person as anyone ‘who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law’. It is a negatively formulated definition, describing statelessness in terms of absence of the legal status of nationality. One interpretative matter concerns the words ‘any State’, begging the question to how many countries an inquiry into statelessness must extend to. As it will be virtually impossible to prove with absolute certainty that one is not a national of any State in the world, UNHCR suggests that an inquiry can be limited to the State or States with which a person has a relevant link, such as being born there or having formerly enjoyed habitual residence there.21 Another 16 Art. 27 1954 Convention. 17 Art. 16 1954 Convention. 18 Art. 22 1954 Convention. 19 See UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons (Geneva, UNHCR, 2014), para 132–139. 20 State Parties cannot place such requirements on stateless persons which the latter are unable to comply with those due to their statelessness, see Art. 6 of the 1954 Convention. 21 See, on the definition of a stateless person: UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons (Geneva, UNHCR, 2014), para 13–56. European Journal of Migration and Law 19 (2017) 101–135