Rainer Bauböck Maybe the better solution for this dilemma is one that was discussed in an earlier GLOBALCIT forum debate: new types of international travel documents similar to those for stateless persons or the Nansen passports for refugees in the interwar period of the 20th century.229 Conclusion: Strengthening, not weakening equal sovereignty In this short intervention I have endorsed the following proposals for a stronger response by international law to weaponised and oppressive uses of citizenship laws: (1) Citizenship attributions that have the intention and effect of undermining the territorial integrity and stability of other states should be considered illegal. (2) They should be distinguished from other practices of extraterritorial mass naturalisations that are worthy of critique if they violate the genuine link principle or the requirement of individual consent but should not trigger international non-recognition of such statuses. (3) International law should develop further to distinguish more clearly between territorial claims that are worthy of recognition and those that ought to be rejected. In the latter case, the rights of individuals from such territories without another recognised nationality should be protected through international travel documents and substitutes for diplomatic protection. Such responses to weaponised citizenship would not “storm the last bastion” of sovereignty; they would merely curb the power of states to attribute their nationality in aggressive, oppressive, and arbitrary ways – for the sake of defending the integrity of the affected states’ territory and citizenship. Ultimately, such a progressive evolution of international law would serve to strengthen the legal fiction that all states are equal as the makers of international law – a fiction that we need to uphold against a looming degeneration of the international order into new forms of anarchy and great power confrontation. 229 ‘Mobility without membership: Do we need special passports for vulnerable groups?’, GLOBALCIT Forum Debate, Mobility without membership: Do we need special passports for vulnerable groups? - Globalcit. 41 Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies