Human Rights of Stateless Persons: Who Is One

In one line

The Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, 1954 defines a stateless person in article 1 as one not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law, excludes three classes, and then in articles 2 to 5 imposes duties on the person and a floor of treatment on the State.

Article 1: the definition

1(1): for the purpose of this Convention, the term stateless person means a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law.

Four things are packed into that clause, and each is worth a sentence.

Not considered as a national. The test is how a State in fact treats the person, not what its statute book says in the abstract. A person may satisfy a nationality law on paper and still not be considered a national in practice, and the definition covers that case.

By any State. The person must be a national of no State. A person with an inconvenient, useless or unrecognised nationality is not stateless within article 1.

Under the operation of its law. Law includes the practice of the authority applying it, which is what makes the first point work.

This is called de jure statelessness. The Convention does not define de facto statelessness, which is the position of a person who has a nationality on paper but cannot obtain its protection, and the omission is the definition's principal criticism, because the larger population in practice is the de facto one.

Article 1(2): the three exclusions

The Convention does not apply to:

(i) persons presently receiving protection or assistance from United Nations organs or agencies other than the High Commissioner for Refugees, so long as they receive it. This is the clause that historically kept a large refugee population within a different agency's mandate.

(ii) persons recognised by the competent authorities of the country of residence as having the rights and obligations attached to the possession of that country's nationality. In other words, a person treated as a national in substance is outside the Convention even without formal nationality.

(iii) persons about whom there are serious reasons for considering that they have committed a crime against peace, a war crime or a crime against humanity; a serious non-political crime outside the country of residence prior to admission; or acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

The third exclusion mirrors the exclusion clause of the 1951 Refugee Convention almost word for word, and it matters because it shows the 1954 Convention was drafted as the companion to the refugee instrument for people who were not refugees.