3. Right to legal residence
11. Stateless persons are not explicitly guaranteed a right to legal residence by the 1954
Convention. However, being authorised to be present in the country is often the first step and
an important pre-requisite to accessing legal rights and essential services, including those set
out by the 1954 Convention. As legal residence of non-nationals is often established on the
basis of foreign travel documents, and an assumption that everyone is a national of at least
one state, stateless persons may face significant challenges in legalizing their stay anywhere
if no state is willing and able to provide them with appropriate (travel) documentation, or in
the absence of a specific legal identity for stateless persons. Therefore, even without an
explicit right to legal residence contained in the 1954 Convention, UNHCR deems legal
residence for a stateless person necessary to ‘would fulfil the object and purpose’14 of the
1954 Convention. This is similar to the international legal discourse on refugees – the 1951
Convention does not explicitly contain a right to a legal residence status (merely the nonrefoulement principle), but it has been widely accepted that without granting refugees some
form of legal residence permit it is impossible to fulfil the object and purpose of the 1951
Convention. The legalization of residence of stateless persons is seen as part of the
contemporary understanding of a protection regime for stateless persons, and most states
that have SDPs attach automatic residence rights to the recognition of an individual as
stateless.15 Belgium is currently the only known exception where residence rights are not an
automatic consequence of being determined to be stateless, but a recognised stateless person
can apply for a residence permit after the determination of their statelessness status. The
Netherlands has also announced an intention not to link residence rights to the statelessness
status determination, although the relevant legislation has not been passed yet.16
II.
Identification of Stateless Persons and Determination of
Statelessness Status
12. Identification of stateless persons is not, and should not, be an end-goal in itself, but rather a
means towards achieving other policy goals. In order to implement any policies that
specifically target statelessness, it is important to know who is stateless. The implementation
of a statelessness-specific protection regime requires identifying beneficiaries of the relevant
rights, but also some mechanisms for the prevention of statelessness require knowing
whether a person is stateless or at risk of statelessness. For example, the 1961 Convention on
the Reduction of Statelessness Art. 1 lays out rules for the acquisition of nationality based on
14
UNHCR Handbook on the Protection of Stateless Persons (Geneva 2014), p. 52, para 147.
Most states with an SDP grant a right to legal residence for those who have been determined to be stateless. See ENS
Briefing Paper of September 2021 (p. 21), and ENS, Good Practice Guide on Statelessness Determination and the Protection
Status of Stateless Persons, (December 2013), p. 36. This does not mean all stateless persons need to be granted legal
residence. For example, State Parties to the 1954 Convention are not obliged to legalize residence of those stateless
persons who have a ‘realistic prospect, in the near future, of obtaining protection consistent with the standards of the
1954 Convention in another State’ nd those who ‘voluntarily renounce a nationality because they do not wish to be
nationals of a particular State or in the belief that this will lead to grant of a protection status in another country’ (See
UNHCR, Handbook on the Protection of Stateless Persons, (Geneva 2014), pp. 54-56.) The 1954 Convention also, just like
the 1951 Refugee Convention, contains a number of exclusion grounds for certain categories of stateless persons.
16 See Legislative Proposal of 18 December 2020, Nr. 35 687 (version 2), available here:
<www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/wetsvoorstellen/detail?cfg=wetsvoorsteldetails&qry=wetsvoorstel%3A35687> ,
[accessed on 30 August 2021, in Dutch]. See more in K. Swider ‘Wat is de betekenis van nieuwe staatloosheidwetgeving
voor de praktijk?’, Verblijfblog 3 March 2021 [in Dutch]. See also K. Bianchini, The Implementation of the Convention
Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons: Procedures and Practice in Selected EU States, PhD thesis defended at the
University of York, UK, in April 2015, pp. 143-144.
15
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