for months and years … without any authority taking an active interest in his fate and wellbeing. 284 The UN Secretary General has similarly stated that “stateless persons are … uniquely vulnerable to prolonged detention and States should be sensitized to respect the rights of stateless persons to be free from arbitrary detention as a result of their stateless status. 285 9.5 Legal personhood PRINCIPLE LEGAL STANDARD 9.5.1. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. All persons are equal before the law. UDHR, Art. 6: “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. ICCPR, Art. 16: “Everyone shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. 9.5.2. It is not permissible for States to deny any person’s legal personhood or their equality before the law through the deprivation of nationality and denial of the right to enter and remain in their own country. 164. The right to be recognized as a person before the law or ‘legal personhood’ is firmly established in both international and regional human rights instruments, including the CERD (Article 5), CEDAW (Article 15(1)), CMW (Article 24), CRPD (Article 12(1)), ACHPR (Article 3), ACHR (Article 3), the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man (Article 2), the Arab Charter on Human Rights (Articles 11-12), and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU (Article 20). 165. Under Article 16 ICCPR and Article 6 UDHR, everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. It is not permissible for States to deny any person’s legal personhood or their equality before the law through the deprivation nationality and the right to enter and remain in their own country. This right in Article 16 ICCPR is non-derogable.286 According to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, “[t]his right is central to the conception of human rights, as it expresses the right and the capacity of each human being to be the holder of rights and obligations under the law. It has often been described as the ‘right to have rights’ and as a direct consequence of the right to respect for human dignity.”287 284 ECtHR, Kim v Russia (2014), Application no. 44260/13, para 54. UN Secretary-General, ’Guidance Note of the Secretary General: The United Nations and Statelessness‘ June , available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/4e11d5092.html, p. 6. 286 See Art. 4 ICCPR. 287 UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, ‘General comment on the right to recognition as a person before the law in the context of enforced disappearances’ A HRC Rev.1 (p. 9), para. 42. 285 80