166. The UN Secretary-General has recognized that “full enjoyment of all human rights is generally only
possible when an individual possesses nationality 288 and the HRC have reflected that
“international human rights law reserves a very limited set of rights to citizens, in particular in
relation to political rights, freedom of movement, and economic rights. 289 Furthermore, the
IACtHR has held that the right of every person to recognition as a person before the law is a
parameter for assessing “whether a person is entitled to any given rights and whether such person
can enforce such rights and that lack of recognition as a person before the law “implies the
absolute denial of the possibility of being holder of such rights and of assuming obligations, and
renders individuals vulnerable to the non-observance of the same by the State or by
individuals .290 The Court continues, making special note of States’ obligations with regard to
persons who are vulnerable, excluded and/or discriminated against:
“The State has a duty to provide the means and legal conditions in general, so that the right
to personality before the law may be exercised by its holders. Specially, the State is bound to
guarantee to those persons in situations of vulnerability, exclusion and discrimination, the
legal and administrative conditions that may secure for them the exercise of such right,
pursuant to the principle of equality under the law.”291
The right to recognition as a person before the law and equality before the law are thus “bedrocks
of human rights, administrative law and the notion of the rule of law 292, and strongly connected
to the notion of legal identity.293 Indeed, any individual, regardless of their status or level of
documentation is entitled to recognition as a person before the law and equality before the law
because (legal) identity is inherent to all people.294 Identity includes, amongst others, a person’s
“nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law .295 In view of this, depriving a person
of these elements of identity such as nationality and the right to enter and remain in one’s own
country (see Principle 9.1), would constitute a violation of the right to legal personality and
equality before the law.
167. Indeed, it has been held that deprivation of nationality is a violation of the right to legal
personhood. According to the IACtHR,
“[…] the violation of the right to nationality of the [applicants], the situation of statelessness in
which they were kept, and the non-recognition of their juridical personality and name,
denaturalized and denied the external or social projection of their personality. Based on the
above, the Court considers that by depriving the [applicants] of their nationality, the [State]
violated the rights to juridical personality and to a name embodied in Articles 3 and 18 of the
American Convention, in relation to Article 19 thereof, and also in relation to Article 1(1) of the
Convention.”296
288
UN, ‘Guidance Note of the Secretary-General: The United Nations and Statelessness’
,p .
HRC, ‘Human rights and arbitrary deprivation of nationality’
, A HRC
, para .
290 IACtHR, Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous Community v Paraguay (2006), Series C No. 146, para 188.
291
IACtHR, Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous Community v Paraguay (2006), Series C No. 146, para 189.
292
ISI, ’Statelessness, Human Rights and the Sustainable Development Agenda. A Working Paper‘ February 2017), available at:
https://files.institutesi.org/SDG_working-paper2017.pdf, p. 16.
293 See also Sustainable Development Goal
. : “By
, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.
294 ISI, ’Statelessness, Human Rights and the Sustainable Development Agenda. A Working Paper‘ (February 2017), p. 15-16.
295
Art. 8 CRC.
296 IACtHR, Girls Yean and Bosico v Dominican Republic (2005), Series C No. 130, paras 186-187.
289
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