95. Third Report on the Situation of Human Rights in
Chile, IACHR OEA/Ser/L/V/II.40.
96. See, e.g., Court of Justice of the European Union,
Janko Rottmann v. Freistaat Bayern, Judgment, Case
C-135/08, Mar. 2, 2010.
97. UN Human Rights Council, Human rights and
arbitrary deprivation of nationality: Report of the Secretary-General, 19 December 2013, A/HRC/25/28, at paras.
10-11, https://www.refworld.org/docid/52f8d19a4.html.
98. See Audrey Macklin, Citizenship Revocation, the
Privilege to Have Rights and the Production of the Alien, 40
Queen’s L. J. 1, 15 (2014) (“Indicia of arbitrariness may
include (but are not exhausted by) disproportionality,
unreasonableness, denial of procedural fairness, lack of
independent judicial engagement, discrimination and a
desire to effectuate exile.”).
99. UN General Assembly, International Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 21
December 1965, United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 660, p.
195.
100. CCPR, Art. 2(1).
101. Laura van Waas and Sangita Jaghai, All Citizens are
Created Equal, but Some are More Equal Than Others, 65
Netherlands Int’l L. Rev. 413 (2018).
102. UN Human Rights Council, Report of the Special
Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial
discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, A/
HRC/38/52, Apr. 25, 2018, at paras. 12-13, https://undocs.
org/A/HRC/38/52.
103. Id. at para. 14.
104. Id. at para. 19.
105. Id. at para. 30.
106. In the Modise decision, the African Commission on
Human and Peoples’ Rights concluded that living as a
stateless person was “degrading treatment.” Modise v.
Botswana, Comm. 97/93, para. 92. In Open Society Justice
Initiative v. Cote d’Ivoire, the commission identified a
“supreme and dependent relationship” between the right
to dignity and the right to legal status, stating that “the
failure to grant nationality as a legal recognition is an
injurious infringement of human dignity.” According to
the commission, “the very existence of the victim . . . is
vitally compromised” when his or her legal status is
extinguished. Open Society Justice Initiative v. Cote d’Ivoire,
Comm. 318/06, Decision of Feb. 25, 2015, para. 146. The
African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare
of the child found in the Kenyan Nubian Children decision
that the Kenyan government’s discriminatory treatment of
children of Nubian descent was “a violation of the
recognition of the children’s juridical personality, and is an
affront to their dignity and best interests.” Institute for
Endnotes
Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) and
Open Society Justice Initiative (on Behalf of Children of
Nubian Descent in Kenya) v. Government of Kenya, African
Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the
Child, Decision No 002/Com/002/2009, para. 80. These
principles were emphasized in the committee’s General
Comment on Article 6 of the African Charter on the
Rights and Welfare of the Child, adopted in 2014. General
Comment on Article 6 of the African Charter on the Rights
and Welfare of the Child, ACERWC/GC/02 (2014). The
European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has recognized that arbitrary denial of nationality can interfere with
the close link between nationality and identity. Genovese v.
Malta, ECtHR, Judgment of October 11, 2011, at para. 33;
Mennesson v. France, ECtHR, Judgment of June 26, 2014, at
para. 97; Kurić and others v. Slovenia, ECtHR [GC], Grand
Chamber Judgment of June 26, 2012, at para. 337. The
Council of Europe has also recognized that “certain
provisions [of the European Convention on Human
Rights] may apply also to matters related to nationality
questions. Amongst the most important ones are: Article
3,” which prohibits torture, and inhuman and degrading
treatment, on the basis that “actions that lower a national
or alien in rank, position or reputation and are designed to
debase or humiliate can be a violation of Article 3.”
Council of Europe, European Convention on Nationality
Explanatory Report, (1997) ETS No. 166, paras. 16, 18.
107. See, e.g., Eric Fripp, ed., The Law and Practice of
Expulsion and Exclusion from the United Kingdom:
Deportation, Removal, Exclusion and Deprivation of
Citizenship 62 (2015) (citing cases covering “discriminatory
practices impeding birth registration of children of
undocumented refugees in Ecuador (which would support
their identification as citizens by birth on the territory), the
failure by Colombia to confer its nationality on children
born stateless on its territory and Zimbabwean laws
denying its citizenship to the children of Zimbabwean
parents born abroad.”).
108. Id. at 61.
109. Sarah Bantu, Contingent Citizenship: The Law and
Practice of Citizenship Deprivation in International
European and National Perspectives 36 (2015).
110. Patti Tamara Lenard, Democracies and the Power to
Revoke Citizenship, 30 Ethics & International Affairs 73, 75
(2016).
111. See UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless
Persons (2014), at para. 23.
112. See Audrey Macklin, Citizenship Revocation, the
Privilege to Have Rights and the Production of the Alien, 40
Queen’s L. J. 1, 15 (2014).
113. Bronwen Manby, Citizenship and Statelessness in
Africa: The law and politics of belonging 46 (2016).
114. Tunis Conclusions, at para. 59.
167
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