2019
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
1(1)
sovereignty of states more strictly and are included in numerous international
human rights treaties. 22 Thus, several treaties prohibit the revocation of nationality
if the person concerned would become stateless as a result. 23
As illustrated above, the statelessness definition contained in art 1 of the 1954
Convention only refers to so-called de jure stateless persons. However, scholars
have debated if the definition of a ‘stateless person’ should be understood as also
including circumstances of de facto statelessness. 24 According to the 1949 UN’s
A Study on Statelessness, such de facto stateless persons are persons who, ‘having
left the country of which they were nationals, no longer enjoy the protection and
assistance of their national authorities’. 25 Although they remain nationals of a
state, their legal bond to that state is in effect meaningless, as they are not able to
enjoy the protection or benefits usually contingent on citizenship. 26 In essence,
their status amounts to a situation of statelessness — only that they are not
‘stateless’ by definition.
Consequently, as de facto stateless persons do not fall under the legal term of
statelessness, they are not protected under the Conventions on Statelessness. As a
result, the distinction between those two categories — de jure and de facto
statelessness — exemplifies a gap in their legal protection. 27
This legal distinction seems difficult to justify in light of the factual similarity
of de jure and de facto stateless persons. Therefore, many calls have been made to
also include de facto statelessness in the definition of art 1 of the 1954
Convention. 28 The Final Act of the United Nations Conference of
Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and Stateless Persons (‘The Final Act
of the 1954 Convention’) supports the view that de facto statelessness is to be
treated the same as de jure statelessness. 29 The Final Act of the 1954 Convention
recommends that:
[E]ach Contracting State, when it recognizes as valid the reasons for which a person
has renounced the protection of the State of which he is a national, consider
sympathetically the possibility of according to that person the treatment which the
Convention accords to stateless persons. 30
However, that recommendation is of a non-binding nature. 31 The same applies
to the Final Act to United Nations Conference on the Reduction or Elimination of
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Michelle Foster and Hélène Lambert, ‘Statelessness as a Human Rights Issue: A Concept
Whose Time has Come’ (2016) 28(4) International Journal of Refugee Law 564, 577.
ibid.
Weissbrodt and Collins (n 8) 251.
United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Refugees and Stateless Persons, A Study on
Statelessness, UN Doc E/1112 and Add.1 (1 August 1949) Introduction III.
There is also a possibility that a person cannot prove or verify their nationality, which makes
it practically useless: Weissbrodt and Collins (n 8) 263–64.
ibid 251.
See eg ibid.
Final Act of the United Nations Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Status of Refugees and
Stateless Persons, opened for signature 14 December 1950, 360 UNTS 117 (entered into force
28 July 1951) (‘Final Act of the 1954 Convention’). See also Jane McAdam, Climate Change,
Forced Migration, and International Law (Oxford University Press 2012) 140–41.
Final Act of the 1954 Convention (n 29) art 3. With regard to the drafting history of the 1954
Convention (n 3), see Nehemiah Robinson, Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless
Persons: Its History and Interpretation (Commentary Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1955)
(‘Statelessness Convention Commentary’). This commentary was reprinted by the Division
of International Protection of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1997.
McAdam, Climate Change, Forced Migration (n 29) 140–41.
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