SOLVING STATELESSNESS was originally mandated to address only the situation of stateless persons who were also refugees.7 Following the emergence of largescale statelessness linked to the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia, UNHCR’s statelessness mandate was expanded by the UN General Assembly in 1995.8 The General Assembly identified statelessness as a cause of forced displacement, but also indicated that “the prevention and reduction of statelessness and the protection of stateless persons are important also in the prevention of potential refugee situations”,9 thereby acknowledging the importance of addressing statelessness to prevent conflict and persecution from occurring in the first place. It is also true that a number of the largest and most well-known stateless populations continue to live in what could be described paradoxically as a perpetual state of humanitarian crisis, the most obvious example being the Rohingya in Myanmar.10 The connection between statelessness and human rights is more straightforward; stateless persons are first and foremost human, and the right to nationality (the antidote to statelessness) is a universal human right.11 In practice, possession of a nationality often acts as the gateway to the full panoply of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. In particular, nationality brings with it access to political participation, the full right to residence within the State of nationality’s territory, and a sense of identity. The slow but steady improvement in the breadth and depth of documented evidence of the impact of statelessness in human rights terms,12 the greater use of UN 7 8 9 10 11 12 UNGA, Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 14 December 1950, A/RES/428(V), para. 6(A)(II) and 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, 28 July 1951, entry into force 22 April 1954, 189 UNTS 137, Art. 1(A). UNGA, Resolution A/RES/50/152, Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, 9 February 1996. Ibid. emphasis added. For example, see, Fortify Rights, Policies of Persecution: Ending Abusive State Policies against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, 2014. See, for example, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 10 December 1948, Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III), Art. 15; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 16 December 1966, entry into force 23 March 1976, 999 UNTS 171, Art. 24; and Convention on the Rights of the Child, 20 November 1989, entry into force 2 September 1990, 1577 UNTS 3, Art. 7. For example, see recent statelessness ‘mapping’ studies undertaken by UNHCR 49