Stripping foreign fighters of their citizenship: International human rights and humanitarian law considerations regarding the dead,34 internment35 or “in determining whether civilians in the hands of the enemy are protected under Geneva Convention IV”.36 As regards the last example, Article 4 of Geneva Convention IV stipulates that [p]ersons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals. Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are. Although Geneva Convention IV will usually not be relevant to the phenomenon of foreign fighters, as most of them are involved in non-international armed conflicts,37 the provision shows that, in theory, deprivation of nationality could have an effect on an individual’s protection. Imagine a foreign fighter who has two nationalities, each of a neutral State, and that the country of second nationality, in contrast to the country of first nationality, has no “normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hand [the foreign fighter is]”. It seems that this would mean that if the country of first nationality revokes nationality, the foreign fighter, now only in the possession of the nationality of the second country, would be regarded as a protected person under Geneva Convention IV, whereas if he or she still had ties to the country which has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands he or she is, he or she would not. Sandra Krähenmann has explained that the exclusions of Article 4 of Geneva Convention IV “are based on the premise that nationals of neutral or co-belligerent states will be protected by their state of origin through normal diplomatic channels, including exercise of diplomatic protection […], and therefore do not need the additional protection provided by Geneva Convention IV.”38 But in the case of citizenship stripping, this basic premise is undermined, as the country of origin does not protect its own citizen but, to the contrary, passes the buck to other actors.39 The above-mentioned consequence would not only follow for those foreign fighters not directly participating in hostilities (the term foreign fighter is a little 34 35 36 37 38 39 See GC I, Art. 17. See GC III, Art. 22; and GC IV, Art. 82. S. Krähenmann, above note 1, p. 18. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 18. Sandra Krähenmann has noted that the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Tadić case replaced the nationality standard by the concept of allegiance and that “[a]rguably, a similar reasoning could apply to foreign fighters whose allegiance is not defined by nationality, but religion or ideology. Such an approach might be especially relevant when states of origin show reluctance to exercise diplomatic protection on their behalf [original footnotes omitted]”. (Ibid., p. 19.) 613