By-passing state power and neutralising state bureaucracies 45 Myanmar has acceded to three of the relevant human rights treaties— Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), although compliance has been weak. There has been a series of submissions, recommendations, and concluding observations relating to nationality and the lack of safeguards against statelessness in Myanmar issued by CRC and CEDAW.19 Nonetheless, statelessness in Myanmar has spiralled since the 1990s, particularly in North Rakhine State (NRS) where the majority of Rohingya live (European Network on Statelessness and Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion 2019). Despite its inclusion elsewhere in human rights law, the right to nationality has, in Myanmar and throughout the globe remained unenforceable and is described as ‘a right without a remedy’ since in many cases, it is not clear which states have an actionable duty to grant citizenship (Goldston 2006:58). There is a growing movement that attempts to clarify, articulate, and strengthen human rights norms relating to the right to nationality (Weissbrodt and Collins 2006; Spiro 2011; Foster and Lambert 2016). Goldston (2006:341) argued in 2006 that the prohibition of racial discrimination could in the future provide important constraints on state practices in relation to citizenship deprivation. The right of every individual not to be arbitrarily deprived of nationality is guaranteed under international law. Of note in the case of Myanmar is that nationality cannot be denied on the basis of race, nationality, ethnicity, or religion (Human Rights Council 14/12/2009: para 80). In practice, however, states continue to arbitrarily deprive people of their nationality with impunity (Kenny 2020). Kenny (2020) considers statelessness as a result of arbitrary deprivation of nationality under international criminal law. He argues that the legal framework of crimes against humanity of apartheid, persecution, ‘other inhumane acts,’ deportation or forced transfer, as well as the crime of genocide, may provide a means to redress arbitrary deprivation of nationality. Many of these efforts to move citizenship deprivation under the purview of international criminal law draw on the example of Rohingya in Myanmar and underline the international impunity that Myanmar has enjoyed in this regard (Pillai 2019; Kenny 2020). Despite this growing movement to re-centre statelessness in rights and justice (Spiro 2011; Foster and Lambert 2016), the notion of statelessness as cause of discrimination that can be remedied through the state recognition of each individual’s legal status, rather than a consequence of state persecution, remains dominant. The alignment In terms of ensuring each human being has a formal citizenship and the ability to prove that citizenship through state documents, both statist and human rights approaches to statelessness have the same objectives. Macklin