Bücken and de Groot 39 ‘Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality, nor denied the right to change his nationality.’ - Article 15, Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1. Introduction It has been observed in the past few years that in many States, an increasingly popular academic and political discourse concerning measures depriving nationality on grounds of behaviour seriously pre-judicial to the State has taken place.1 The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness2 does not prohibit these kinds of sanctions, provided that legislative safeguards guarantee the avoidance of statelessness. Article 8 (3) of the Convention, however, carves out a controversial exception to this general prohibition. Accordingly, States may submit a declaration at the time of ratification of the Convention in order to retain the right to deprive a person of his nationality in certain cases. To conform to the Convention, the declaration needs to fulfil three conditions. Firstly, the declaration must be explicitly limited to the grounds mentioned in Article 8(3). Secondly, these grounds must exist already in national law at the time of submission of the declaration. Thirdly, the power of deprivation permitted by Article 8 (2) and (3) shall only be exercised in accordance with the law and under the judicial safeguards of the right to a fair hearing by a court or other independent body. This article aims to conduct a thorough analysis and a critical reflection of the declarations submitted under Article 8(3) by ratifying States of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. In this context, this article aims to answer the following question: what are the legality and compliance issues of the declarations submitted under Article 8(3) of the 1961 Convention on Statelessness? In accordance with this purpose, observations on the frequency of declarations on the basis of Article 8(3) will be discussed (Section 2). The declarations will be evaluated and compared against the corresponding national provisions and analysed in terms of their compliance with the limitations stipulated in Article 8(3) (Section 3). In this context, the reactions of other Contracting States to the declaration submitted by Tunisia are of particular relevance. Furthermore, the controversial question of whether Contracting States, which submitted a declaration on the basis of Article 8(3) but later repealed the relevant provisions, can later reintroduce such a mechanism in their national law again will be discussed. 2. The 1961 convention on the reduction of statelessness The adoption of The Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (the 1961 Convention) on 30 August 1961, constituted a milestone in the struggle for the establishment of an international legal framework to reduce and prevent statelessness. Prior to the 1961 Convention, key achievements in 1. A. de Guttry et al., Foreign Fighters under International Law and Beyond (Springer, 2016), p. 472. Compare also: Library of Congress, ‘Treatment of Foreign Fighters in Selected Jurisdictions: Country Surveys’, Library of Congress (2017), https://www.loc.gov/law/help/foreign-fighters/country-surveys.php; ABC News, ‘Fact check: How does Australia’s plan to strip foreign fighters of citizenship compare to other nations’, ABC News (2015), http://www.abc.net.au/ news/2015-06-11/foreign-fighters-citizenship-around-the-world/6498920. 2. Text of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 989, p. 175.