Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2019 1(2) Paradoxically though, it is precisely at the moment when the relationship between individual and state ruptures … that human rights are both most needed and cease to exist in any enforceable, tangible form of protection for human life. 56 Or, as the UN Secretary-General stated, while human rights are granted because of one’s quality of being human, ‘[i]n practice, however, those who enjoy the right to a nationality have greater access to the enjoyment of various other human rights’. 57 Having a nationality also has important legal and non-legal consequences, such as the right to full democratic participation, 58 eligibility for many public sector jobs, 59 etc. However, this article does not intend to discuss the many reasons why citizenship status is important and why the ECtHR’s narrow interpretation of art 8 in the context of citizenship deprivation is flawed. Instead, it will demonstrate that the current interpretation of the right to private and family life in this context is problematic, not because of fundamental arguments, but because it creates a discrepancy in the Court’s own case law on art 8, causing incoherence at the national level. This will be demonstrated by means of a case study of Belgium. In what follows, a brief overview of the Belgian nationality legislation is given. The focus here lies not on the ratione materiae of the law, but on the ratione personae, because it is exactly this limited application of the law that raises fundamental questions with regard to the right to private and family life. BELGIUM: A CASE STUDY A Three Grounds for Citizenship Deprivation 60 The possibility to deprive someone of their citizenship has been enshrined in Belgian law from the beginning of the twentieth century. 61 In 1984, it was 56 57 58 59 60 61 ibid, citing Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, new ed, 1976) 302, reflecting Arendt’s well-known ‘right to have rights’. See also David Owen, ‘Citizenship and Human Rights’ in Ayelet Shachar et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook on Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017); Irene Bloemraad, ‘Does Citizenship Matter?’ in Ayelet Shachar et al (eds), The Oxford Handbook on Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017). Impact of the Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality on the Enjoyment of the Rights of Children Concerned, and Existing Laws and Practices on Accessibility for Children to Acquire Nationality, inter alia, of the Country in Which They Are Born, If They Otherwise Would Be Stateless, UN Doc A/HRC/31/29 (16 December 2015) 9 [27]. For example, while in Belgium non-citizens can participate in municipal elections, they are still excluded from federal or regional elections. See La loi de 19 mars 2004 visant à octroyer le droit de vote aux élections communales à des étrangers [The Law of 19 March 2004 Allocating Voting Rights to Aliens in Municipal Elections] (Belgium) [tr author]. In 2014, access to public sector jobs was very limited for non-(EU)citizens in ten European countries. See ‘Labour Market Mobility’, Migrant Integration Policy Index (Web Page, 2015) <http://www.mipex.eu/labour-market-mobility>, cited in Irene Bloemraad and Alicia Sheares, ‘Understanding Membership in a World of Global Migration: (How) Does Citizenship Matter?’ (2017) 51(4) International Migration Review 823, 844. The terms ‘citizenship deprivation’ and ‘denationalisation’ are used as synonyms in this article. They are sometimes associated with different rights and obligations, but this distinction is irrelevant for the purposes of this article. See Gibney (n 1). Patrick Wautelet, ‘Deprivation of Citizenship for “Jihadists” Analysis of Belgian and French Practice and Policy in Light of the Principle of Equal Treatment’ (Research Paper, CITÉ 2016) <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2713742>. 270