2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(1) While statelessness may have different causes, 2 the consequences for the individual often manifest in the same difficult human experience: rejection, exclusion, marginalisation and the feeling of not belonging anywhere. 3 Nationality is important in that it creates a legal bond between state and individual. It allows for the enjoyment of basic rights, including the rights to education, work, health care, consular protection, as well as the right to reside in and return to a country. Stateless people are often viewed as ‘aliens’ residing illegally in their country of origin or habitual residence, and thus are often subject to prolonged immigration detention, as well as deportation to third countries. In the deliberate lack of state protection, individuals belonging to minorities 4 — either already stateless or at (heightened) risk of becoming stateless — are extremely vulnerable not only to destitution, human trafficking and forced labour, but also to systematic and widespread hate speech, 5 arbitrary actions committed by both state actors and civilians, forced labour, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings that 2 3 4 5 Inter alia state dissolution/succession, ill-defined/discriminatory nationality laws (as direct instances of ethnic, religious or gender-based discrimination), birth to a stateless parent, lack of birth registration or inability to satisfy certain technical requirements for the acquisition of nationality. See Handbook on Statelessness in the OSCE Area: International Standards and Good Practices (Report, OSCE and UNHCR 28 February 2017) <https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/5/1/302201.pdf>. See ‘This Is Our Home’: Stateless Minorities and their Search for Citizenship (Report, UNHCR, 3 November 2017) <https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/wpcontent/uploads/UNHCR_EN2_2017IBELONG_Report_ePub.pdf> (‘This Is Our Home’). See also Stateless in Europe: Ordinary People in Extraordinary Circumstances (Report, UNHCR March 2018). While there is no internationally agreed definition as to which groups constitute minorities, the United Nations has provisionally defined minorities as based on national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity, and has provided that states should protect their existence. See Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, GA Res 47/135, UN Doc A/RES/47/135 (3 February 1993) annex art 1. Another important element is that minorities are in non-dominant position in any given society. See Francesco Capotorti, Study on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, UN Doc E/CN.4/Sub.2/384/Rev.1 (1979) 96 [568]. Although there is no established definition of hate speech, for the purpose of this study, hate speech is defined as any verbal or written manifestation of discrimination, hostility or hatred on the basis of race, ethnicity, language, religion, nationality, origin, gender, and other identities, instigation thereto, and instigation of violence. Instead of prohibiting hate speech as such, international law forbids the incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence. Incitement constitutes a dangerous form of hateful speech, because it explicitly and deliberately aims at generating discrimination, hostility and violence against an individual or a group of individuals which may lead to atrocity crimes. See United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech (Strategy Document, 18 June 2019) (‘UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech’). Furthermore, claims about a group’s inferiority, calls for violence against an individual or an entire group because of their fixed identity characteristics and the use of racist, homophobic, or ethic slurs all constitute hate speech. See Caitlin Carlson, ‘Censoring Hate Speech in Social Media Content: Understanding the User’s Perspective’ (2017) 17(1) Communication Law Review 24. 6