Nationality and Statelessness

Abstract

Nationality is the legal bond between a person and a state, denotes membership to said state, and gives rise to reciprocal rights and duties between individual and state. This legal bond is also commonly referred to as “citizenship” and the terms “nationality” and “citizenship” are widely used interchangeably, particularly in the field of international law. However, it is important to note that at the domestic level, citizenship and nationality may constitute distinct legal statuses. In addition, the terms “national” and “nationality” have been used in some international legal contexts to describe membership of a “nation” in the sense of a particular cultural, ethnic, or historic community. Each state’s municipal law dictates who can and who cannot be recognized as a state’s national, with the two principal doctrines for the attribution of nationality (at birth) being jus soli (based on birth in a state’s territory) and jus sanguinis (based on descent). A third common ground for the attribution of nationality is long-term residence, which can open the door to naturalization. It is also possible for persons to renounce, lose, change, or be deprived of their nationality under certain circumstances. While international law recognizes the freedom of states to regulate access to nationality as an exercise of their sovereignty, certain limitations to this freedom exist under international customary and treaty law. A stateless person is someone who is not considered a national by any state under the operation of its law, as defined under Article 1 of the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons. There are at least 15 million stateless persons worldwide, according to estimates from 2020 (World’s Stateless Report 2020). Statelessness has numerous causes, including the conflict of nationality laws, arbitrary deprivation or denial of nationality, discriminatory practices in attribution of nationality, and inadequate regulation of nationality in the context of state succession, to name a few. Statelessness has a detrimental effect on individuals, families, and communities. The lack of nationality can severely obstruct the enjoyment and access to a wide range of rights and services, contributing to poverty and marginalization, and even leading to forced displacement. Although human rights law provides for the right to nationality, and two international treaties were adopted specifically with a view to addressing statelessness, over the years the issues of nationality and statelessness have received inconsistent attention from the international community and from scholars. Therefore, as compared to other areas of international law, there are still gaps in the literature on these subjects. However, interest in statelessness and the problems associated with the regulation of nationality has been growing steadily in recent years, and this has heralded many new and insightful publications.