Statelessness - History - After World War II

After World War II

The United Nations (UN) was set up in 1945, right after the end of World War II. From the very start, the UN had to deal with the mass atrocities of the war, not least huge refugee populations across Europe.

To address the nationality and legal status issues of refugees in Europe, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN requested the Secretary-General to carry out a study of statelessness in 1948. The ECOSOC appointed a Committee on Refugees and Stateless Persons to draft a convention that would address the problems faced by refugees and stateless persons, including their legal status. A treaty on refugees was prepared with a draft protocol addressing the status of stateless persons. However, as International Refugee Organization – the predecessor to the UN High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) – was in the process of being dissolved, the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was adopted without inclusion of the Protocol addressing statelessness.

Three years prior to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted. UDHR provides both for a right to asylum (article 14) and a right to nationality (article 15). The UDHR also expressly prohibited arbitrary deprivation of nationality, something which had affected many of the war-time refugees.

In 1949, the International Law Commission included the topic "Nationality, including statelessness" in its list of topics of international law provisionally selected for codification. At the behest of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 1950, that item was given priority.

The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was done on 28 July 1951, later attracting the signatures of 145 state parties as of late January 2005.

The International Law Commission at its fifth session in 1953 produced both a Draft Convention on the Elimination of Future Statelessness, and a Draft Convention on the Reduction of Future Statelessness. ECOSOC approved both drafts.

Following these developments in both human rights law and refugee law, the UN eventually adopted in 1954 the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.

The 1954 Statelessness Status Convention provided a definition of a stateless person (which has since become part of customary international law, according to the International Law Commission), and sets out a number of rights that stateless persons should enjoy. The Statelessness Status Convention thus became the basis for an international protection regime for stateless persons.

Seven years later – only one year after the 1954 Convention entered into force – the UN adopted another convention on statelessness, namely the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.