International Refugee Law and the Protection of Stateless Persons

Abstract

Even read purely as an addition to the burgeoning literature on statelessness, this book holds its own. But, as its title well captures, it is first and foremost a book about refugee law. As such, it does more than hold its own; it provides the first comprehensive treatment of the interaction between statelessness and refugee law. Reading it, one soon becomes aware how relatively ignored this topic has been. The UNHCR Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status (1979, reissued 2019) deals in only cursory fashion with the application of the refugee definition to stateless persons. To date, none of the UNHCR Guidelines on International Protection tackle it. With notable exceptions, such as Eric Fripp’s (less comprehensive) monograph, Nationality and Statelessness in the International Law of Refugee Status (2016), the vast majority of studies of the refugee definition tend to treat the passages in article 1A(2) of the 1951 Refugee Convention dealing with persons ‘not having a nationality’ as peripheral, and to proceed pretty much on the basis that this definition is really just about nationals. Yet the refugee definition is only rightly said to have universal application (to all those fearing persecution) because it applies equally to non-nationals and nationals, and very significant numbers of non-nationals seek protection under the Refugee Convention. Along with Fripp’s monograph, Foster and Lambert’s book marks the end of an era during which non-nationals have had near invisibility in refugee law analysis and have received treatment only within a separate statelessness lexicon.