T H E G L O B A L S TAT E O F C I T I Z E N S H I P 1. Citizenship around the World in 2024 Thematic lead: Maarten Vink Everyone has a right to a nationality, states the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This means that every person should be recognised as a citizen by at least one country, and that no one should be stateless. This norm is firmly embedded in international law and reflected in UN Conventions aimed at preventing, or at least reducing, the occurrence of statelessness. At the same time, guaranteeing the universal right to citizenship is complicated by the fact that, in the current international order, each sovereign state has the prerogative to regulate how its citizenship can be acquired and lost. Precisely because states can autonomously decide who their citizens are, historically, there has been a great variation in the ways in which states do so. that some people become citizens of two (or even more) countries at birth, for example, if their parents are from different countries, while others end up not being recognised as citizens by any country. Whereas statelessness continues to be viewed as an anomaly, multiple citizenship is increasingly accepted as a fact of life in a migratory world where exclusive allegiance to a single country has become outdated. In this first section of the report, we map the main patterns in regulating birthright citizenship, in other ways to acquire and lose citizenship, as well as in the slow but steady trend of increasing dual citizenship acceptance. As a result, whether or not a newborn child will be a citizen of their country of birth depends on the law in place in that country. Whether a child will acquire the citizenship of one or both of the parents (and how ‘parent’ is defined, as we discuss below in section 2) depends on the laws in place in their parents’ countries of citizenship. There are significant differences between countries in terms of how long a person has to wait as an immigrant until they can apply to become a citizen and what other conditions they need to fulfil (see section 3). Finally, how secure citizenship is depends on whether and how easily governments can deprive citizens of that status (see section 4). Birthright citizenship refers to the legal status of citizenship acquired through birth. A newborn child can acquire the citizenship of a country through birth in two different ways: by birth to a citizen parent (often referred to as ius sanguinis, or the right of blood) or by birth in the territory of a state (ius soli, or the right of soil). While these principles are often seen as mutually exclusive, most countries combine the two. Birthright citizenship Acquiring citizenship at birth by descent As Figure 1.1 indicates, only a minority of countries covered by the dataset exclusively apply a descent principle for the acquisition of citizenship at birth. In 27% of countries, a child only acquires the citizenship of that country if one of their parents is a citizen. This is the case even if the child is born in the territory of the country and would otherwise be stateless. The citizenship laws in many of these countries do provide for the citizenship acquisition of foundlings (children of unknown parentage found in the country’s territory). For most people, the country of which they are a citizen is determined at birth. Since life chances are greatly determined by the economic, social and political development of the country of which one is a citizen, this birthright lottery is hugely impactful. For that reason, we start this report by mapping the main ‘birthright’ principles that countries apply to determine who is a citizen. The lack of international coordination in how people can acquire citizenship means 4