In the end, Committee members drafted a Convention on the status of refugees and a Protocol to the proposed Convention that focused on stateless persons. The Committee did not fully address the elimination of statelessness largely because it was assumed that the newly formed International Law Commission (ILC) would focus on that issue. Historically, refugees and stateless persons both received protection and assistance from the international refugee organizations that preceded UNHCR. The draft Protocol on Statelessness was intended to reflect this link between refugees and stateless persons. But the urgent needs of refugees and the impending dissolution of the International Refugee Organization meant that there was not sufficient time for a detailed analysis of the situation of stateless persons at the 1951 Conference of Plenipotentiaries that had been convened to consider both issues. Thus, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was adopted at the Conference, while adoption of the Protocol addressing stateless persons was postponed for a later date. Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, a stateless refugee receives protection as a refugee, since the arbitrary denial of citizenship because of a person’s race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion can indicate that the individual should be recognized as a refugee. What does the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons provide for? The Protocol on stateless persons that had been drafted as an addendum to the 1951 Refugee Convention was made into a Convention in its own right in 1954. The 1954 Convention is the primary international instrument that aims to regulate and improve the status of stateless persons and to ensure that stateless persons are accorded their fundamental rights and freedoms without discrimination. (See Annex 1 for a list of States Parties to the 1954 Convention.) The provisions of the Convention are, in many respects, very similar to those of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Acceding to the Convention is not a substitute for granting nationality to those born and habitually resident in a State’s territory. No matter how extensive the rights granted to a stateless person may be, they are not the equivalent of acquiring citizenship. The 1954 Convention includes a strictly legal definition of a stateless person: “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law” (what is known as de jure stateless). Who is a national? Who is stateless? To be considered a national by operation of law means that an individual is automatically considered to be a citizen under the terms outlined in the State’s enacted legal instruments related to nationality or that the individual has been granted nationality through a decision made by the relevant 10