4 Issues of Statelessness and Refugees

4.1 StatelessnessA stateless person — the 1954 Convention's definition — is "a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law." Causes: state succession (the Soviet and Yugoslav dissolutions' millions); conflicts of laws (jus soli/jus sanguinis gaps — the in-between births); deprivation and denationalization (the Rohingya's 1982 Myanmar citizenship law — the mass statelessness case of the era); administrative failures (unregistered births); discrimination in transmission (gender-equality gaps — the conventions' target). The law: the 1954 Conventionrelating to the Status of Stateless Persons (identity, travel documents, minimum rights) and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (the prevention code: birthright grant to otherwise-stateless children, deprivation limits); the UNHCR's statelessness mandate; the right to nationality in the UDHR (Article 15: "everyone has the right to a nationality") and the CRC (children's right to acquire nationality). The harm: the person without a state is without the right to have rights — documents, work, movement, protection — the perpetual alien everywhere.4.2 RefugeesThe 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (and its 1967 Protocol removing the time/geography limits) — the refugee regime's charter. The definition (memorize verbatimstructure): a refugee is a person who, owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or politicalopinion, is…