Rainer Bauböck the territory of other states on grounds of ties and consent of co-ethnic groups living there, it would open the pandora’s box of irredentist secessions sponsored by militarily more powerful neighbours, which would also fatally undermine the domestic accommodation of such minorities through cultural recognition or territorial autonomy. The genuine link doctrine will still play an important role in countering instances of oppressive attribution and deprivation of nationality. The doctrine has fallen into disrepute among many international lawyers. Some have suggested that its positive conception of nationality as grounded in effective ties between states and individuals should be replaced by a mere negative prohibition of attribution of a nationality for the sake of exercising the right of diplomatic protection.218 Yet abandoning a genuine link principle means giving up on the promise of a universal human right to a nationality made in Art. 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.219 How else should one determine which state is responsible for offering citizenship to stateless persons if not based on genuine connections? On what other grounds could the UAE be held responsible for circumventing their duty to turn bidoons into citizens by purchasing them the nationality of the Comoros?220 As I have argued elsewhere, a positive version of a genuine link principle would primarily serve as a normative guideline for citizenship laws in democratic states.221 It would go beyond a criterion of habitual residence by covering also first generations of emigrants and their offspring whose lives remain entangled with their country of origin. By contrast, unlimited transmission of citizenship iure sanguinis or selling passports to investors would fall foul of a genuine link requirement. Giving a positive but limited version of genuine links a more prominent role also in international law would strengthen individual rights of access to citizenship as well as mutual recognition of nationality among states, which is hollowed out by state practices of oppressive imposition as well as by offering citizenships-of-convenience to individuals on purely instrumental grounds. Such hard and soft barriers to extraterritorial naturalisations do not entail that kin states should refrain from protecting their co-ethnic minorities abroad. Where such minorities are oppressed and discriminated against, they may need a kin state either as external support for their claims to minority rights or as a safe haven that keeps its borders open for those who have no other option but to leave. Kin states may thus act as external protectors and guarantors of minority rights and autonomy agreements (as Austria did with regard to the German speaking population of South Tyrol in 1946) or they may grant citizenship to expellees (as Germany did for co-ethnic minorities in communist Central and Eastern Europe until the end of the Cold War). Neither of these cases involved extraterritorial naturalisations, which were deemed ineffective, unnecessary, or counterproductive. Limits of territorial integrity The right of sovereign states to territorial integrity may be the core norm of international law that can be applied against weaponisation of citizenship, but this right is not absolute. When a regime commits genocide or crimes against humanity, it is morally legitimate for other states to intervene on humanitarian grounds of a right to protect, even if doing so is legal only if there is an authorisation from the United Nations. The international community should have intervened to stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. NATO invoked a plausible threat of genocide in its intervention in Kosovo in 1999, although the legality of the latter remains disputed. The more difficult cases discussed in this forum concern contested territories or de facto states that are neither under the effective sovereignty of a parent state nor internationally recognised as independent states or as another state’s territory. 218 Sloane R. (2009), ‘Breaking the Genuine Link: The Contemporary International Legal Regulation of Nationality’, 50 Harvard International Law Journal 1; Thwaites R. (2018), ‘The Life and Times of the Genuine Link’, Victoria University of Wellington Law Review 49(4), 645-670. 219 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations, 1948, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights. 220 Lori 2019. 221 Bauböck, R. (Eds.). (2018), Democratic inclusion, Manchester University Press. 39 Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies