to continue to work in this area....”); U.N. SecretaryGeneral, Guidance Note of the Secretary General: The United Nations and Statelessness, June 2011 at 3 (“The U.N. General Assembly has entrusted the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with a mandate relating to the identification, prevention and reduction of statelessness and protection of stateless persons.”), available at <http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/4e11d5092.pdf>. ly commemorated throughout the year. See, generally, UNHCR Intergovernmental meeting at Ministerial level: Closing remarks by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (8 December 2011) available at <http://www.unhcr.org/4ef094a89.html>. UNHCR is best known as the international agency mandated from its inception in 1951 by the U.N. General Assembly with responsibility for providing international protection to refugees and others of concern, and together with governments, for seeking permanent solutions for their problems. Statute of the Office of the UNHCR ¶ 1, U.N. Doc. A/RES/428(v) (Dec. 14, 1950); see also, 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, July 28, 1951, 19 U.S.T. 6259 and 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, Jan. 31, 1967, 606 U.N.T.S. 267. 15 In this landmark decision the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law authorizing the deprivation of citizenship as punishment for conviction by court martial of wartime desertion. More fully, the Supreme Court stated: It is important to note that UNHCR’s mandate concerning statelessness worldwide does not necessarily extend to all stateless persons. Under Article 1 of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, Sept. 28, 1954, 360 U.N.T.S.117 (1954 Convention), those stateless “persons with respect to whom there are there are serious reasons for considering that: (a) They have committed a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity...; (b) They have committed a serious non-political crime outside the country of their residence prior to their admission to that country; (c) They have been guilty of acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations” are excluded from the scope of the Convention and are not viewed as deserving of international protection or as persons of concern to UNHCR. Article 1 also excludes those who have already obtained the rights and obligations accorded to nationals in the country where they reside as well as those who are already receiving the protection of the United Nations. In addition, individuals who are stateless based on having voluntarily renounced their nationality for reasons of personal convenience may not warrant international protection. It should be understood that a stateless individual who falls within any of these exclusion grounds would not generally be eligible for the protection, rights, or benefits discussed throughout this report. 13 The year 2011 also marked the 60th Anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, July 28, 1951, 19 U.S.T. 625, which UNHCR equal- 38 14 U.S. Commemorations Pledges, Fact Sheet, Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, December 7, 2011, available at <http://www.state.gov/j/prm/ releases/factsheets/2011/181020.htm>. We believe, as did Chief Judge Clark in the court below, that use of denationalization as a punishment is barred by the Eighth Amendment. There may be involved no physical mistreatment, no primitive torture. There is instead the total destruction of the individual’s status in organized society. It is a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development. The punishment strips the citizen of his status in the national and international political community. His very existence is at the sufferance of the country in which he happens to find himself. While any one country may accord him some rights, and presumably as long as he remained in this country he would enjoy the limited rights of an alien, no country need do so because he is stateless. Furthermore, his enjoyment of even the limited rights of an alien might be subject to termination at any time by reason of deportation. In short, the expatriate has lost the right to have rights. This punishment is offensive to cardinal principles for which the Constitution stands. It subjects the individual to a fate of ever-increasing fear and distress. He knows not what discriminations may be established against him, what proscriptions may be directed against him, and when and for what cause his existence in his native land may be terminated. He may be subject to banishment, a fate universally decried by civilized people. He is stateless, a condition deplored in the international community of democracies. It is no answer to suggest that all the disastrous consequences of this fate may not be brought to bear on a stateless person. The threat makes the punishment obnoxious. Citizens of Nowhere: