Meijers Committee standing committee of experts on international immigration, refugee and criminal law grounds of racial or ethnic origin. According to the case law of the ECtHR such differential treatment requires very weighty reasons to be justified. The UN Special Rapporteur on Racism has also warned that distinctions between single and dual nationals result in the creation of second-class citizenship for citizens of immigrant origin and in (indirect) racial discrimination. With regard to citizenship deprivation, differential treatment of dual nationals is motivated by reference to obligations of international law that prevent the withdrawal of nationality if the person concerned would become stateless. However, no convincing reasons have been provided that are capable of justifying the disproportionate effect of citizenship deprivation on racial and ethnic minorities. To ensure equal citizenship, including for racial and ethnic minorities, states engaging in the prevention and combating of terrorism should do so by adopting measures that are equally applicable to single and dual nationals. 9. Recommendations The Meijers Committee makes the following recommendations: - States should exercise restraint when using dual nationality as a criterion to differentiate between citizens. In principle single and dual nationals should be subject to equal treatment in the field of nationality law as well as in other fields. Where dual nationals are treated differently, states should take due account of the effects of such differential treatment on citizens of immigrant origin and racialised minorities. Where such effects exist, less favourable treatment of dual nationals can only be justified by very weighty reasons. - Persons with dual or multiple nationality who engage in terrorist activities should be subject to the same human rights compliant sanctions as single nationals. The Meijers Committee fully supports the efforts of states to avoid statelessness but urges them do so without differentiating between groups of citizens. States have to comply both with their obligations under international norms against statelessness and those prohibiting racial discrimination. Administrative and criminal law measures that can be equally applied to all citizens (such as withdrawal of passports and criminal prosecution) constitute preferred means of fighting terrorism compared to citizenship deprivation. - States that apply citizenship deprivation as an instrument to combat terrorism are urged to limit the scope of deprivation provisions to persons who acquired their nationality later in life (not at birth) and to allow citizenship deprivation only for terrorist activities that have been committed within a limited period after the acquisition of citizenship. To avoid conditional citizenship, it is recommended that citizenship deprivation should no longer be possible after a period of five or maximum eight years after citizenship acquisition. The Meijers Committee recalls that a residence duration of five years is considered sufficient for naturalisation in 12 EU Member States and a residence of six to eight years in another 11 Member States. This may be seen as the timeframe after which non-nationals are entitled to a secure citizenship status. 27