criteria relating to nationality.163 The AfComHPR has held, moreover, that where an individual or group has a right to the nationality of the relevant country under existing law, but this has been arbitrarily denied in practice, it is not a suitable remedy for the previous discriminatory denial if those impacted are only permitted to acquire nationality with a status different from those attributed nationality at birth.164 The African institutions have also moved towards a reversal in the application of the definition of nationality famously established by the Nottebohm case—a ‘social fact of attachment’ making a person ‘more closely connected with the population of the State conferring nationality than with that of any other State’165—to operate not to allow nonrecognition of nationality granted without such a connection but, rather, to provide a right to nationality in a State where those connections exist. In this, they have provided the Nottebohm judgment with an afterlife that was not imagined by the ICJ in 1955, nor by those commentators criticising the judgment for implying both that the ‘genuine connections’ that matter are those of ethnicity and descent rather than other types of ‘attachment’, and that the lack of such genuine connections might provide grounds for loss of nationality.166 This evolution in jurisprudence—long urged by legal scholars167 as much as political theorists168—was also enabled by other developments in international law, especially the elaboration of normative frameworks in response to the populations left stateless following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.169 The concept of ‘genuine link’ or ‘genuine connection’ as the foundation for the grant of nationality on State succession is relied on both within the Council of Europe’s treaties on nationality170 and by the ILC’s Articles on Nationality of Natural Persons in relation to the Succession of States.171 The rules for attribution of nationality on State succession have also been the background to many of the African cases. In in its decision on the Kenyan Nubians (descendants of Sudanese soldiers recruited by the British for military campaigns in East Africa and settled in Kenya), the AfComHPR noted that the Nubians had been resident in Kenya for over a century, and had ‘formed inextricable links to the land which according to them constitutes the only homeland they have ever known and where they bury their dead’.172 In the complaint brought against Sudan concerning the nationality of a child of mixed Sudanese and South Sudanese heritage denied recognition of Sudanese nationality following the secession of South Sudan in 2011, the ACERWC directly cited the language of Nottebohm to argue that it was an international obligation for a State (in this case, Sudan) to confer nationality on ‘children who have the required social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and 163 General Comment No 2 (n 47) para 94. John K Modise v Botswana (n 98); OSJI v Côte d’Ivoire (n 49) para 132. 165 Nottebohm Case (n 13) 23. 166 RD Sloane, ‘Breaking the Genuine Link: The Contemporary International Legal Regulation of Nationality’ (2009) 50 HarvIntlLJ 1; A Macklin, ‘Is It Time to Retire Nottebohm?’ (2017) 111 AJIL Unbound 492; R Thwaites, ‘The Life and Times of the Genuine Link’ (2018) 49 VUWLR 645. 167 MO Hudson, ‘Report on Nationality, Including Statelessness’ in UNYBILC vol II (1952) UN Doc A/CN4/50. 168 JH Carens, ‘Membership and Morality: Admission to Citizenship in Liberal Democratic States’ in WR Brubaker (ed), Immigration and the Politics of Citizenship in Europe and North America (University Press of America 1989); A Shachar, The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard University Press 2009). 169 D Orentlicher, ‘Citizenship and National Identity’ in D Wippman (ed), International Law and Ethnic Conflict (Cornell University Press 1998) 296. 170 European Convention on Nationality (n 25) art 18; European Convention on the Avoidance of Statelessness in relation to State Succession (n 25) art 5. 171 ILC, ‘Articles on Nationality of Natural Persons in Relation to the Succession of States (with Commentaries)’ Supplement No. 10 (A/54/10), 3 April 1999, annexed to UNGA Res 55/153 (12 December 2000) UN Doc GA/RES/55/153, arts 11, 22, 24, 25 and commentary passim. 172 Nubian Community v Kenya (n 50) para 156. 164