a precondition for acquiring or retaining nationality is lifted when such renunciation or loss is not possible. For example, refugees should not be expected to return to or to contact the authorities of their country of origin to renounce their citizenship. Good practices: Ukraine In 1944, more than 200,000 Crimean Tatars were deported from Crimea to various regions of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), accused of having cooperated with the occupying Nazi forces. Most were deported to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Two decades later, the President of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR declared that the accusations against the Crimean Tatars were groundless and that the Tatars could reside anywhere on the territory of the USSR, including on the Crimean peninsula. Those Tatars who decided to return to Crimea, however, faced problems in obtaining registration, employment, and access to land and housing. In 1987, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution restricting repatriation of the Crimea Tatars to only eight inland districts of the peninsula, preventing their return to their previous homelands on the more fertile and developed south coast. Two years later, after the Supreme Soviet declared “illegal and criminal” the actions used to deny rights to “the peoples subjected to forced deportation,” a massive flow of returnees to Crimea ensued. In the wake of the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, complex political and legal problems concerning state succession, including issues of territorial boundaries and nationality, suddenly arose. Ukraine, which now included the territory of Crimea, became the successor State to the former Ukrainian SSR. Accordging to the country’s first Citizenship Law (1991), persons who were citizens of the former USSR and who were permanently resident on Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, when independence was declared on 24 August 1991, automatically (ex lege) became citizens of Ukraine, regardless of their origin, social status, race, nationality, gender, education, native language, political opinion, or religion. The only conditions under which these persons could not automatically acquire Ukrainian citizenship were if they were citizens of another State and if they had objections to becoming Ukrainian citizens. Even those individuals who had registered their legal residence in Ukraine between independence and the entry into force of the Citizenship Law three months later were also automatically granted Ukrainian citizenship. Some 150,000 Crimean Tatars acquired Ukrainian citizenship through these provisions. An estimated 108,000 Crimean Tatars who returned to Ukraine after the Citizenship Law came into force in November 1991 faced new problems 29