Regional Report on Citizenship: The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Emirates. In these cases, the laws set out that when someone acquires a foreign nationality, their old nationality is automatically lost. Renouncing a previously held foreign nationality is not a requirement in all MENA countries and for all modes of naturalisation apart from those countries where dual nationality is prohibited. In cases where dual nationality is acquired by birth or through naturalisation it is tolerated in every country apart from the five listed above. Deprivation of nationality In all legislation across the region, provisions exist where nationality can be withdrawn without the request of the individual concerned. In other words, the state is empowered to strip someone of his or her nationality according to a state decision. Providing for the possibility to deprive citizens of their nationality is more common in the MENA region than providing for automatic loss of nationality. In most of the nationality laws there are different regulations in terms of deprivation of nationality for those who are naturalised (and often their families) and those who are nationals at birth. An individual or family who has acquired nationality by naturalisation is in fact much more exposed to subsequent withdrawal of that nationality, being subject to many more grounds upon which they can lose the nationality – in fact there are twice as many clauses for those who are naturalised as for other citizens. For example in Qatar, Article 12 has four criteria specifically for deprivation from naturalised persons, which includes denaturalisation due to a conviction for an honour crime. Often, there is a particular time period in which a naturalised person is subject to these additional provisions. For example, in Egypt an individual can be stripped of nationality within five years from the date of naturalisation, or within up to ten years from the date of acquisition if it is found out that naturalisation was based on forgery or false statements.62 In general, the grounds for deprivation of nationality, although differing between countries, tend to relate to issues of allegiance and behaviour that is considered disloyal. In the MENA region, there are five particularly common grounds where governments have given themselves the power to strip citizens of their nationality. These are when 1) a person commits an act or crime that threatens the security of the state, 2) renders services to a foreign state or is 3) discovered to have acquired the nationality through fraud (only Algeria, Lebanon and Tunisia have no legislation for the possibility of deprivation of fraud), 4) demonstration of allegiance to a foreign or enemy state and 5) in response to the commission of a serious non-political crime. Five countries – Morocco, UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – allow the state to withdraw nationality on all of these five grounds. Alongside these particularly common criteria, there are others, which are not as common but recur in several countries, such as following four: 1) for reasons relating to honour, (for example provisions in Kuwait and Qatar that apply exclusively to naturalised citizens), 2) long-term absence from the territory of the state (for example in Egypt, Libya, Qatar, Syria, UAE and Yemen), 3) terrorism, (although only Morocco has this explicitly engrained in nationality laws, other countries – such as Bahrain – have decrees or Emir decisions) and 4) failure to fulfil military obligations (Morocco and Tunisia). Again, various discriminatory provisions exist in the nationality laws, and this is also a feature of some provisions concerning nationality deprivation. The main three are the following: 62 Egyptian law no 26 of 1975, Article 15. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-Comp. 2017/3- © 2017 Author(s) 17