Case Note the status of a national, and expressing preference for a permanent residence instead. After Croatian independence, Mr Hoti did apply for Croatian citizenship, but was refused it. The Court did not assign significance to the potential culpability of the applicant in his lack of citizenship, and insisted that Croatia had an obligation to ensure his stability of residence regardless of his prior reluctance towards becoming a citizen of the SFRY. D The Use of Terms ‘Nationality’ and ‘Citizenship’ in the Judgment The ECtHR did not clarify the meaning and use of the terms ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ in its judgment. This is unfortunate, considering that in many Slavic languages, including Croatian, the two terms are used to denote very different phenomena, and the distinction between nationality and citizenship is particularly crucial in the context of the post-Yugoslav ethnically charged citizenship regimes. 43 The word nacionalnost in Croatian is used to refer to ethnicity — an important legal, political and social term in post-Yugoslav states, while the word državljanstvo, linguistically closer to the English term ‘citizenship’, is the one signifying a legal bond between a state and its citizens. The different meanings of these two words in Croatian may explain what appears to be an inconsistency in the English account of the applicant’s and the Government’s arguments regarding the nationality and citizenship statuses of Mr Hoti. For example, Mr Hoti claimed to be an Albanian national, and at the same time maintained that Albanian authorities denied that he was one of their citizens. The uncertainties could have been avoided if the Court had explicitly addressed the linguistic challenges of this case, clarified the terms ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ in the English language and indicated the relevant terminology in Croatian when analysing the evidence. IV CONCLUSION Hoti v Croatia establishes an important precedent for recognising the role of statelessness in access to human rights at the level of international jurisprudence. One of the most significant and potentially influential aspects of the judgment is the determination of the statelessness status of the applicant. Firstly, it entails that if the statelessness of an applicant is a relevant factor in the context of access to human rights, the standard of proof cannot be too high, and the state shares the responsibility to establish statelessness. The Court did not give much consideration to the Government’s submission that it is up to the applicant to show that he is stateless, and instead confronted Croatia for not proactively determining the applicant to be stateless. Secondly, the reasoning of the Court on the determination of Mr Hoti’s statelessness implies an obligation on the part of states to have mechanisms and procedures in place to identify the status of stateless persons within their jurisdiction, at least in contexts where their statelessness might be a relevant factor in accessing the ECHR rights. This is in line with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees position, which identifies such an obligation as 43 See Jo Shaw and Igor Stiks, ‘Citizenship in the New States of South Eastern Europe’ (2012) 16(3–4) Citizenship Studies 309; Maria-Eleni Koppa ‘Ethnic Albanians in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Between Nationality and Citizenship’ (2001) 7(4) Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 37. 189