States allegedly depriving applicants of their nationality in order to silence or punish their human rights activities rather than for a purpose contemplated by Article 8.139 81. Depriving a national of their nationality, thus making the national an alien, for the purpose of expelling them, is not legitimate.140 This is explicitly affirmed in Article 8 of the Draft Articles on the Expulsion of Aliens, adopted by the International Law Commission in 2014, which provides that: “A State shall not make its national an alien, by deprivation of nationality, for the sole purpose of expelling him or her .141 Expulsion of nationals is expressly prohibited in several international and regional human rights instruments, including Article 9142 and 13(2) of the UDHR and Article 12(4) of the ICCPR.143 Similarly, depriving nationality of a national while they are abroad, for the purpose of prohibiting them from (re-)entering, is prohibited. Indeed, the Human Rights Committee has held with regard to Article 12(4) ICCPR: “In no case may a person be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his or her own country. The reference to the concept of arbitrariness in this context is intended to emphasize that it applies to all State action, legislative, administrative, and judicial; it guarantees that even interference provided for by law should be in accordance with the provisions, aims and objectives of the Covenant and should be, in any event, reasonable in the particular circumstances. The Committee considers that there are few, if any, circumstances in which deprivation of the right to enter one’s own country could be reasonable. A State party must not, by stripping a person of nationality or by expelling an individual to a third country, arbitrarily prevent this person from returning to his or her own country.”144 The same principle is referred to in the Explanatory Report to Protocol 4 to the ECHR. Even though this principle was not included in the text of Article 3 of Protocol 4, the ECtHR held in Naumov v. 139 For example, Emin Rafik Oglu Huseynov v. Azerbaijan (Application no. 1/16). This is widely recognised in early international law scholarship and in discussions at the 1930 League of Nations Hague Conference, as set out in Guy Goodwin-Gill, ‘Deprivation of Citizenship, Statelessness, and International Law’ May . He cites, among others, Lauterpacht’s work from which sets out that “The indiscriminate exercise by a State of the right of denationalizing its subjects, when coupled with the refusal to receive them when deported from a foreign country, constitutes an abuse of rights which could hardly be countenanced by an international tribunal . H. Lauterpacht, The Function of Law in the International Community Oxford University Press ; repr’d , as cited in G. Goodwin-Gill, ‘Deprivation of Citizenship, Statelessness, and International Law’ May p. . 141 These Draft Articles were welcomed by the UN General Assembly in Resolution 69/119 of 10 December 2014 (UN Doc A/RES/69/119). See also the preparatory work of the International Law Commission in which it was agreed that “States should not use denationalization as a means of circumventing their obligations under the principle of the non-expulsion of aliens . Emphasis added, Yearbook of the International Law Commission 2008 Volume II Part Two, Chapter VIII, para. 171. 142 Note that deprivation of nationality has been characterised as ‘banishment’ or ‘exile’, e.g. A. Macklin and R. Bauböck eds , ’The return of banishment: do the new denationalisation policies weaken citizenship?‘ EUI Working Paper RSCAS 015/14, available at: https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/34617/RSCAS_2015_14.pdf; A. Macklin, ‘Citizenship revocation and the privilege to have rights’ (December 2014) (Podcast, part of the RSC Michaelmas term 2014 Public Seminar Series) available at: https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/news/citizenship-revocation-and-the-privilege-to-have-rights-professor-audrey-macklin. 143 Note that Article 13 ICCPR sets further standards with regard to the expulsion of aliens. See also Article 22 of the Draft articles on the expulsion of aliens adopted by the International Law Commission in which states that “An alien subject to expulsion shall be expelled to his or her State of nationality or any other State that has the obligation to receive the alien under international law ; Annex 9 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation that provides in paragraph . that “A Contracting State shall admit into its territory its nationals who have been deported from another State ; and Article of the Convención sobre condiciones de los extranjeros [Convention regarding the status of Aliens in the respective Territories of the Contracting Parties], adopted in Havana on 28 February 1928. 144 Human Rights Committee, ‘General Comment No. : Freedom of movement article ’ CCPR C Rev. Add. , para 1. 140 49