Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD),3 and the somewhat disappointing record of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD Committee) responsible for the oversight of the treaty in interpreting this language.4 In quick succession, Neha Jain illustrated how States are able to ‘manufacture’ statelessness despite the minimum standards of international law, ‘through creative techniques of indirect discrimination that circumvent international law standards by tampering with ostensibly neutral criteria relevant to nationality’ and administrative requirements that are impossible to fulfil.5 And yet, during the gap between these assessments, Peter Spiro had suggested that we were on the brink of a ‘new international law of citizenship’, in which international human rights law was colonising nationality as ‘the last bastion of sovereign discretion’.6 Around the time that Spiro was writing, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began for the first time to devote significant resources to its mandate on statelessness and, in 2014, launched a ten-year campaign to end statelessness.7 Normative guidance on nationality and statelessness multiplied at both United Nations (UN) and regional levels.8 It could be declared that the eradication of statelessness had achieved ‘issue emergence’, as a ‘concept whose time has come’.9 In 2024, UNHCR’s #ibelong campaign was converted into a Global Alliance on Statelessness, with membership from States and civil society as well as UN agencies.10 Even the pessimists would agree that we have moved on from the position expressed by Hersch Lauterpacht in 1955 that ‘according to international law, States are fully at liberty to adopt legislation resulting in statelessness’.11 It is increasingly hard to argue that international law still regards the management of nationality as entirely within the domaine reservé of States.12 But has the increased focus on avoidance of statelessness really had so little effect on the underlying prerogative given to States by international law to determine who are their citizens, including through the use of discriminatory laws and procedures? Even if the rhetoric has improved, are we still essentially in the world of 1955, the same year that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its famous judgment in the Nottebohm case, affirming that ‘international law leaves it to each State to lay down the rules governing the grant of its own nationality?’13 Many States continue to emphasise this discretion, a principle established in 1930 by the League of Nations Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws,14 despite the intervening establishment of the international human rights 3 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (adopted 21 December 1965, entered into force 4 January 1969) 660 UNTS 195. 4 M Foster and TR Baker, ‘Racial Discrimination in Nationality Laws’ (2021) 11 Columbia Journal of Race and Law 83, 146. 5 N Jain, ‘Manufacturing Statelessness’ (2022) 116 AJIL 237, 239–40. 6 PJ Spiro, ‘A New International Law of Citizenship’ (2011) 105 AJIL 694, 694, 717, 718. 7 M Manly, ‘UNHCR’s Mandate and Activities to Address Statelessness’ in A Edwards and L van Waas (eds), Nationality and Statelessness under International Law (CUP 2014) 115; M Seet, ‘The Origins of UNHCR’s Global Mandate on Statelessness’ (2016) 28 IJRL 7. 8 See resources collected at: UNHCR, Statelessness <https://www.refworld.org/thematic-area/statelessness>. 9 LN Kingston, ‘Conceptualizing Statelessness as a Human Rights Challenge: Framing, Visual Representation, and (Partial) Issue Emergence’ (2019) 11 Journal of Human Rights Practice 52; M Foster and H Lambert, ‘Statelessness as a Human Rights Issue: A Concept Whose Time Has Come’ (2016) 28 IJRL 564. 10 Global Alliance to End Statelessness <https://statelessnessalliance.org/>. 11 H Lauterpacht, ‘Codification and Development of International Law’ (1955) 49 AJIL 16, 27. 12 L van Waas, Nationality Matters: Statelessness under International Law (Intersentia 2008) 39; B von Rütte, The Human Right to Citizenship: Situating the Right to Citizenship within International and Regional Human Rights Law (Brill/Nijhoff 2023) ch 3. 13 Nottebohm Case (Liechtenstein v Guatemala) (Second Phase) (Judgment) [1955] ICJ Rep 4, 23. 14 Convention of The Hague on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws (adopted 13 April 1930, entered into force 1 July 1937) 179 LNTS 89 (League of Nations Convention on Nationality) art 1. The convention remains in force, with 22 States Parties and another 27 signatures.