4, ADDRESSING STATELESSNESS THROUGH THE RIGHTS TO EQUALITY AND NON-DISCRIMINATION Ms Andrejeva, who was residing in Latvia, had become stateless upon the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The application of Latvia’s pension laws was such that a Latvian citizen would be entitled to a higher pension than Ms Andrejeva was as a permanently resident non-national. Ms Andrejeva argued that the laws contravened her right to be free from discrimination with respect to her pension rights under the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR).** The ECtHR, finding in Ms Andrejeva’s favour, made it clear that the ECHR protected her as a permanently resident non-national* from discrimination in respect of her enjoyment of a State pension. The Court held that differential treatment between permanently resident non-nationals and citizens could only be justified by “very weighty reasons”, which had not been demonstrated by the government in this case. This decision provides an important precedent. In reaching its conclusion, the Court did two particularly significant things: (a) it acknowledged that Ms Andrejeva was protected from discrimination as a result of her status as a permanently resident non-national; and (b) it explained that States that are Parties to the ECHR cannot simply invoke a right to differentiate between citizens and non-citizens without the distinction being scrutinised and the State being required to show “very weighty reasons” for drawing such distinctions when determining who benefits from particular rights under national laws. While (a) does not amount to a direct recognition by the Court that the right to non-discrimination provides protection from discrimination on grounds of statelessness, it comes close. Further, it is the authors’ view that there is potential for this jurisprudence to be developed so that statelessness is explicitly recognised as a protected ground of discrimination, if the right cases are taken to court.“ “2 ‘8 “4 v. Latvia, 18 February 2009. For a more detailed discussion of the case see Equal Rights Trust, Unravelling Anomaly: Detention, Discrimination and the Protection Needs of Stateless Persons, 2010, pp. 41-42. The rules relating to State pension were considered by the ECtHR to be within the ambit of Ms Andrejeva’s right to peaceful enjoyment of her possessions under Article 1 of Protocol 1 to the ECHR and accordingly, her right to nondiscrimination under Article 14 of the ECHR applied. This is the term that Latvia uses to describe its stateless population. See, L. Bingham and L. Gamboa, “Litigating against statelessness”, chapter 5 in this book. 112