2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(2) recognition. Thus, statelessness does not always describe a condition where someone is at risk of violence inflicted by the country of origin. In a literal, but not legal, sense, the individual in question may not even be thought of as a ‘stateless person’ but rather an ‘anarchist’ or ‘hermit’, depending on their reasons for renunciation. B Structural Statelessness Unlike voluntary statelessness, structural statelessness describes situations where the source of the statelessness is international law.78 Resulting from social circumstances, it stands in direct opposition to voluntary statelessness. Structural statelessness can be de facto or de jure. The case of Friedrich Nottebohm sets a historical precedent of de facto structural statelessness. Nottebohm was born a German national but resided in Guatemala for over 35 years. In 1939, he acquired Liechtensteiner nationality to avoid any negative consequences that could arise from being associated with belligerent Germany at the outbreak of the Second World War. Although Nottebohm no longer had German nationality, the Government of Guatemala nevertheless expelled him to the United States where he was detained as an enemy alien for three years. Not neglecting its legal obligation to protect Nottebohm, Liechtenstein responded with an appeal to the International Court of Justice. But the court did not accept the country’s appeal. Instead, it argued that Liechtenstein had no right to provide protection to Nottebohm, despite his naturalisation. The judges justified this verdict by drawing on the concept of effective nationality, which takes nationality to be ‘a legal bond having as its basis a social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests, and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties’.79 Moreover, they argued: [n]aturalization was asked for not so much for the purpose of obtaining a legal recognition of Nottebohm’s membership in fact in the population of Liechtenstein, as it was to enable him to substitute for his status as a national of a belligerent State that of a national of a neutral State, with the sole aim of thus coming within the protection of Liechtenstein but not of becoming wedded to its traditions, its interests, its way of life or of assuming the obligations — other than fiscal obligations — and exercising the rights pertaining to the status thus acquired.80 The verdict marked the first time in which ‘under international law the objective legal status of nationality, by itself, no longer conferred sufficient title on which a State can exercise diplomatic protection regarding its nationals’.81 In 78 Philipp Cole uses the term ‘structural statelessness’ in a much wider sense. He argues that [t]he stateless can be understood … in relation to the global political order. We can see them as a leftover residue lying outside of the international system of sovereign states, either nothing to do with that system or because of some minor inefficiency of that system that can be tweaked. Or we see them as a structural failure, a product of that order, such that finding a solution to statelessness means asking radical questions about the international political order. 79 80 81 Phillip Cole, ‘Insider Theory and the Construction of Statelessness’ in Phillip Cole (ed), Understanding Statelessness (Routledge 2017) 258. Nottebohm Case (Liechtenstein v Guatemala) (Judgment) [1995] ICJ Rep 4, 23. ibid 26. Jeffrey L Blackman, ‘State Successions and Statelessness: The Emerging Right to an Effective Nationality Under International Law’ (1998) 19(4) Michigan Journal of International Law 1141, 1155. 248