UNMAKING CITIZENS: THE EXPANSION OF CITIZENSHIP REVOCATION IN RESPONSE TO TERRORISM International human rights groups, advocates, scholars, and policy-makers alike must keep a watchful eye on citizenship revocation policies and their impacts, through: (1) active monitoring of legal changes and policy implementation; (2) attention and awareness of shifts in political or legal rhetoric, specifically if security or fear of threats are conflated with citizenship or nationality; (3) critical interdisciplinary research; (4) collaboration among the aforementioned groups; (5) advocacy for minority communities inequitably impacted; (6) legislative or legal action; and (7) recognition of and advocacy for alternative policies or approaches. Such efforts are already underway, including at the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion in The Netherlands and European Union Democracy Observatory on Citizenship, both of which provide innovative research and some monitoring of revocation. However, substantial gaps remain within research and other potential efforts. Citizenship revocation, regardless of its application, is a dangerous legal tool that threatens the human rights, social cohesion, legal equality, and unconditional citizenship.72 By revoking an individual’s citizenship, his or her rights are also revoked and the individual is often left in a legal limbo, potentially stateless, or even deported to a country with which she or he have at best tenuous connections. Australia, Canada, and the UK (among other states) should rethink their citizenship revocation initiatives and how they devalue citizenship within their national communities. While national contexts and legal systems vary, states impacted by ISIS returnees are engaging in a variety of programmatic and policy interventions aimed at mitigating potential security threats.73 Recent research suggests that approaches vary, with some states opting for “hard” approaches that emphasize prosecution and punishment (like revocation, deportation, arrest, and imprisonment) and others opting for “soft” approaches (fall under the notion of countering violent extremism (CVE)) that focus on a mix of prevention (like counter-narratives in media, community programs, and providing greater social and economic stability for at-risk communities or groups) rehabilitation (deradicalization), and reintegration.74 The success or effectiveness of soft approaches tend to be mixed, often depending on the context, policy, program, and even individual returnee. Additionally, although “hard” approaches tend to be popular among the public and politically-motivated officials, they also tend to have negative consequences, including increasing social instability within communities, enhancing the success of terrorist recruitment, and continued radicalization during imprisonment.75 According to a 2014 Brookings Institution report on foreign fighter returnees, “Harsh steps are at times necessary, but they must be applied gingerly or else 72 Sangita Jaghai, “Citizenship deprivation, (non) discrimination and statelessness. A case study of the Netherlands” (Eindhoven, The Netherlands: Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, 2017); Choudhury, “The radicalisation of citizenship revocation.” 73 Daniel Byman and Jeremy Shapiro, Be Afraid. Be A Little Afraid: The threat of Terrorism from Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2014); Lizzie Dearden, “Swedish city to offer returning ISIS fighters housing and benefits in reintegration programme,” October 20, 2016, The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sweden-isis-fighters-city-lund-returning-jihadis-housing-job-educationbenefits-reintegration-a7371266.html; Hamed el-Said and Richard Barrett, “Enhancing the Understanding of the Foreign Terrorist Fighters Phenomenon in Syria” (New York: UN Counter-Terrorism Centre, 2017); Alastair Reed and Johanna Pohl, “Tackling the surge of returning foreign fighters,” July 14, 2017, NATO Review Magazine, https://www.nato.int/docu/review/2017/Also-in-2017/daeshtackling-surge-returning-foreign-fighters-prevention-denmark-rehabilitation-programmes/EN/index.htm; Robin Wright, “ISIS Jihadis have returned home by the thousands,” The New Yorker, October 23, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/isisjihadis-have-returned-home-by-the-thousands. 74 Byman and Shapiro, Be Afraid. Be A Little Afraid; Thomas F. Lynch III, Michael Bouffard, Kelsey King, and Graham Vickowski, “The Return of Foreign Fighters to Central Asia: Implications for U.S. Counterterrorism Policy” (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2016); Radicalisation Awareness Network, Responses to returnees: Foreign terrorist fighters and their families (Radicalisation Awareness Network, 2017); Reed and Pohl, “Tackling the surge of returning foreign fighters.” 75 Ibid. Center for Migration Studies of New York | 11