The term “refugee” is generally held to refer to those who have left or been forced to leave their country for political reasons, who have been deprived of its diplomatic protection and have not acquired the nationality or diplomatic protection of any other state. This includes those from whom the state has taken away protection and assistance but without suppressing juridically their nationality, and those whom the state has deprived of their nationality, thus making them stateless. While in strict law the position of these different categories of refugees is not uniform, in practice it is identical.