Zecharias Fassil Ethiopian emperors were well aware of the fact that maintaining the political identity of the people is key to administration, governance, international relations and independence. This is evident from the fact that when Haile Selassie was crowned emperor of Ethiopia on 2 November 1930, one of the very first laws he promogulated was the 1930 citizenship law. This preceded the emperor’s constitution, which was promulgated in 1931, providing an insight into the due regard Ethiopian leaders give to citizenship law. Citizenship is one of the strongest bonds between a natural person and any given state. It confers rights and duties on the citizen. This has been underlined by many authors, and in most instances, it is the ABC of citizenship law. There is a biblical reference to the benefits of citizenship from the year 60 A.D.3 Granting citizenship and laying down the rules relating to it are sovereign acts of each state. Therefore, definitions of how citizenship is acquired and lost are state sovereign choices. However, it is worth noting that globally there are similarities between the relevant laws of different countries. For instance, according to the body of knowledge on citizenship law that developed by the European University Institute (EUI) Global Citizenship project, there are 27 ways of acquiring citizenship and 15 ways of losing it.4 Each country’s law can have pecuilar features. In general terms, citizenship laws are based on two basic concepts: ius soli (literally, the law or right of the soil), whereby citizenship is earned through being born in a given country; and ius sanguinis (the law or right of blood), where citizenship is earned through descent from parents who themselves are or were citizens. As most writers in this field agree, citizenship is a concept that involves three cardinal considerations, namely conferring legal status on individuals, enabling individuals to be political agents, and membership of a community and identity.5 One striking feature of citizenship law in Ethiopia is that, unlike other public laws, it has not undergone recurring revisions or amendments. As will be seen in the following sections, the first citizenship law in Ethiopia continued to be enforced through three regimes. However, like any other law it is not amendment-proof given social dynamics and the impacts of globalisation and political and economic integration. The 1930 law was replaced in 2003. 2. Defining Citizenship This paper uses the terms citizenship and nationality interchangeably as they both refer to the same thing in the Ethiopian context. In social sciences, there are many definitions of citizenship/nationality. However, as this is legal research, the paper uses a legal definition without needing to refer to other definitions. Accordingly, International Court of Justice (ICJ) 3 Acts 22: 25-28 “Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, ‘Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?’ When the centurion heard that, he went and told the chief captain, saying, ‘Take heed what thou doest: for this man is a Roman.’ Then the chief captain came, and said unto him, ‘Tell me, art thou a Roman?’ He said, ‘Yea.’ Source: KJV Bible. 4 See databases on modes of acquisition and loss of citizenship at http://globalcit.eu/acquisition-citizenship/ and http://globalcit.eu/loss-of-citizenship/. 5 See Cohen 1999; Kymlicka and Norman 2000; Carens 2000 and also, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/citizenship/ 2 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/9- © 2020 Author(s)