10 Lucia M. Rafanelli supposedly safe, countries to have their asylum claims assessed.48 Similarly, housing refugees in camps, sometimes for many years,49 doesn’t obviously violate international law, but it allows states to deny refugees full membership and its attendant protections. Further, Owen notes that states may adopt domestic laws compliant in letter with ‘international norms governing the reduction of…statelessness’ but not effectively implement them.50 He cites Catherine Allerton’s work on Malaysia, where the constitution allows resident children without another citizenship to become Malay citizens, but where this provision has never actually been used to grant a child citizenship.51 Under some circumstances, even states that revoke the citizenship of someone without another citizenship may be considered compliant with international law.52 A 2014 law allowed the UK to denaturalise naturalised citizens without another citizenship if the government deemed them dangerous to the UK’s ‘vital interests’ and reasonably believed another country’s law would permit them to acquire citizenship there.53 Importantly, the UK law did not require the denaturalised person actually possess another citizenship—only that the UK government be convinced they could obtain one according to the letter of some other country’s law. Nonetheless, the UK law was considered ‘compatible with the UK’s international obligations.’54 Taken together, these realities mean the state system—specifically, its organisation around the Political Authority and Sovereignty Principles—both makes state membership necessary to enjoy a host of benefits important to living a decent life and being treated justly and with dignity and gives states the power to deny that membership at will. Thus, statelessness, in a very real sense, is created by the state system. Statelessness consists in people being effectively denied state membership and its attendant benefits and protections. What creates this phenomenon? First, what makes it the case that these benefits and protections (legal standing, political enfranchisement, access to basic goods and services, freedom from basic rights violations, etc.) are attached to state membership? The answer I’ve suggested is the state system—more specifically, the fact that the state system is structured around the Political Authority Principle. Second, what makes it the case that people can simply be summarily denied state membership and the benefits attached to it? Again, the answer is the state system—more specifically, the fact that the state system is structured around the Sovereignty Principle. That some will be left disenfranchised, with their basic needs unfulfiled and their rights unprotected, is surely a predictable effect of attaching political representation, basic needs fulfilment, and rights protections to state membership (i.e., adopting the Political Authority Principle) and granting states the power to deny membership at will (i.e., adopting the Sovereignty Principle). A political system built on the Political Authority and Sovereignty Principles is designed around the decision to empower states and give them the authority to make people stateless. The current state system 48 For a critical discussion of such programs, see Cherem 2016; quote from Cherem 2016, 183. USA for UNHCR 2020. 50 Owen 2018, 305. 51 Ibid. 52 See ibid., 309. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 49 https://doi.org/10.1017/S175297192500003X Published online by Cambridge University Press