International refugee law anticipates state conduct in relation to nationality, statelessness, and protection. Refugee status under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees 1951 and regional and domestic instruments referring to it can be fully understood only against the background of international laws regarding nationality, statelessness, and the consequences of national status or the lack of it. In this significant addition to the literature a leading practitioner in these fields examines, in the light of international law, key issues regarding refugee status including identification of 'the country of his nationality', concepts of 'effective nationality', and the inclusion within 'persecution' of a range of acts or omissions focused on nationality.

International Refugee Law and the Protection of Stateless Persons examines the extent to which the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees protectsde jure stateless persons. While de jure stateless persons are clearly protected by the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, this book seeks to explore the extent to which such persons are also entitled to refugee status. The questions addressed include the following: When is a person 'without a nationality' for the purpose of the 1951 Refugee Convention? What constitutes one's country of former habitual residence as a proxy to one's country of nationality? When does being stateless give rise to a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons specified in the 1951 Refugee Convention and/or UNHCR mandate? What are the circumstances under which statelessness constitutes persecution or inhuman or degrading treatment? How are courts assessing individual risk or threat to stateless persons? The book draws on historical and contemporary interpretation of international law based on the travaux préparatoires to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its antecedents, academic writing, UNHCR policy and legal documents, UN Human Rights Council resolutions, UN Human Rights Committee general comments, UN Secretary General reports, and UN General Assembly resolutions. It is also based on original comparative analysis of existing jurisprudence worldwide relating to claims to refugee status based on or around statelessness. By examining statelessness through the prism of international refugee law, this book fills a critical gap in existing scholarship.

This book identifies the rights of stateless people and outlines the major legal obstacles preventing the eradication of statelessness.

In Protecting Stateless Persons: The Implementation of the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons across EU States, Katia Bianchini offers an in-depth comparative study of legislation, case-law and decision-making concerning the treatment of stateless persons in ten EU States. Focusing on whether and why statelessness determination procedures are needed, what their constituent elements should be, how the definition of "stateless person" is interpreted and applied, and what rights are attached to the granting of status, Katia Bianchini critically examines current national legal frameworks, and points a way forward for more effective legislation and practice in the area of statelessness. Against this backdrop, she adds insights into the wider debate on how human rights treaties should be implemented.

Millions of people are forced to flee their homes as a result of various forms of persecution. The instruments to secure international protection are the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. This book examines challenges to the Convention.

The long-awaited second edition of this seminal text, reconceived as a critical analysis of the world's leading comparative asylum jurisprudence.

Millions of people today are forced to flee their homes as a result of conflict, systemic discrimination, persecution, and other violations of their human rights. The core instruments on which they must rely to secure international protection are the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, now complemented by international and regional human rights treaties. This book, the leading text in a field where refugee law is now a subject of global importance, examines key challenges to system of international protection, including those arising from within the asylum process, increased controls over the movements of people, and the 'new' concern with security. The situation of refugees is one of the most pressing and urgent problems facing the international community and refugee law has grown in recent years to a subject of global importance. In this long-awaited third edition, each chapter has been thoroughly revised and updated, every issue, old and new, has received fresh analysis, and 'complementary' or human rights-based protection is given special attention. Features include: analysis and assessment of developments in interpreting the refugee definition, with particular reference to 'social group', 'exclusion', procedures, and the impact of European Union harmonization initiatives. In addition, this book reviews the situation of refugee women and children; the plight of Palestinian refugees; the protection of internally displaced persons; the role and responsibilities of the UNHCR, including in the administration of camps and settlements; the current status in general international law of the fundamental principles of non-refoulement, asylum, and the right to seek asylum; and the extent of protection possibilities in human rights treaties, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights.

'Statelessness' is a legal status denoting lack of any nationality, a status whereby the otherwise normal link between an individual and a state is absent. The increasingly widespread problem of statelessness has profound legal, social, economic and psychological consequences but also gives rise to the paradox of an international community that claims universal standards for all natural persons while allowing its member states to allow statelessness to occur. In this powerfully argued book, Conklin critically evaluates traditional efforts to recognize and reduce statelessness. The problem, he argues, rests in the obligatory nature of law, domestic or international. By closely analysing a broad spectrum of court and tribunal judgments from many jurisdictions, Conklin explains how confusion has arisen between two discourses, the one discourse inside the other, as to the nature of the international community. One discourse, a surface discourse, describes a community in which international law justifies a state's freedom to confer, withdraw or withhold nationality. This international community incorporates state freedom over nationality matters, bringing about the de jure and effective stateless condition. The other discourse, an inner discourse, highlights a legal bond of socially experienced relationships. Such a bond, judicially referred to as 'effective nationality', is binding upon all states, and where such a bond exists, harm to a stateless person represents harm to the international community as a whole.

Understanding Statelessness offers a comprehensive, in-depth examination of statelessness. The volume presents the theoretical, legal and political concept of statelessness through the work of leading critical thinkers in this area. They offer a critique of the existing framework through detailed and theoretically-based scrutiny of challenging contexts of statelessness in the real world and suggest ways forward. The volume is divided into three parts. The first, ‘Defining Statelessness’, features chapters exploring conceptual issues in the definition of statelessness. The second, ‘Living Statelessness’, uses case studies of statelessness contexts from States across global regions to explore the diversity of contemporary lived realities of statelessness and to interrogate standard theoretical presentations. ‘Theorising Statelessness’, the final part, approaches the theorisation of statelessness from a variety of theoretical perspectives, building upon the earlier sections. All the chapters come together to suggest a rethinking of how we approach statelessness. They raise questions and seek answers with a view to contributing to the development of a theoretical approach which can support more just policy development. Throughout the volume, readers are encouraged to connect theoretical concepts, real-world accounts and challenging analyses. The result is a rich and cohesive volume which acts as both a state-of-the-art statement on statelessness research and a call to action for future work in the field. It will be of great interest to graduates and scholars of political theory, human rights, law and international development, as well as those looking for new approaches to thinking about statelessness.