     1.6.1 Ongoing and Emerging Challenges National security has emerged as a major source of denationalization across several countries. To date, however, scholarship and advocacy have largely centred on Europe, North America, and Australia. In Chapter 10, Seet reveals that the Asian region has not been immune to this issue. His important contribution studies the de facto denationalization of hundreds of Indonesian citizens who were subject to exclusion orders and prevented from returning from Syria. As Seet notes, denationalization is not new. What is new is its deployment as a counterterrorism measure; stripping alleged terrorists of their citizenship facilitates their deportation to their other state of nationality and legally grounds the state’s refusal to re-admit alleged ‘foreign terrorist fighters’ who had left the jurisdiction to join armed causes abroad. Seet’s study of Indonesia shows that while counter-terrorism citizenship-stripping measures exercised by Western liberal democracies may have a racially discriminatory bent, the practice of a Muslim-majority state in Asia refusing to repatriate Muslim individuals provides a fresh lens through which to consider the prospect of de facto denationalization as a tool for national security. Indeed, while citizenship had largely been regarded as encompassing the right to enter one’s country of citizenship, such exclusion orders demonstrate the ever-omnipotent power of the state to exclude even their citizens on the grounds of public interest and national security. In another form, while only on a temporary basis, the exclusion of nationals from entering their countries of citizenship during the Covid-19 pandemic is another demonstration of this persistent sovereign power of the state to control their borders and to denude the quality of citizenship, rendering some temporarily but effectively stateless.125 1.6.2 Approaches to Addressing and Resolving Statelessness across the Region Many contributions in this volume ask critical questions about how the problem of statelessness in Asia – or perhaps more appropriately, the 125 On the temporary exclusion of citizens during the Covid-19 pandemic see Olivera Simic, ‘Australia, Covid-19, and the India Travel Ban’ (2021) 9(2) Griffith Journal of Law & Human Dignity 35. For information about the impact of Covid-19 on stateless persons see also Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, ‘Statelessness in a Global Pandemic’ (Impact Report, 2020) <https://files.institutesi.org/Covid19_Stateless_Impact_Report .pdf> accessed 18 September 2023. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009399555.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press