about refugee law and human rights law and is less interested in issues of nationality laws and conflict of laws. Following a brief introduction (section 1), the paper proceeds by exploring the meaning and substance of the right to nationality and the concept of arbitrary deprivation of nationality in international law, including UN Human Rights Council Resolutions, UNHCR guidelines and UN Secretary General positions (section 2). Sections 3 and 4 examine arbitrary deprivation of nationality in the jurisprudence of the courts as an indicator of existing State practice. More specifically, section 3 focuses on the regional systems for the protection of human rights, with a particular emphasis on reparation and remedies for victims of violations of arbitrary deprivation of nationality. Section 4 examines whether arbitrary deprivation of nationality, either on its own or when taken with other forms of harm, amounts to persecution for the purpose of Article 1A(2) in the case law of domestic courts across the world, and if so whether it is well-founded and on what grounds; it also analyses whether denial of nationality per se can amount to persecution. Section 5 provides a summary of key findings on the interpretation of Article 1A(2) in relation to stateless persons. Section 6 concludes on the interrelationship between human rights and refugee law, and suggests an appropriate and consistent approach to refugee status and statelessness based on elements of good practice. At the outset, it is worth pointing out that no real difference exists in public international law between ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’, with the former traditionally only having salience in the international context.14 As the International Court of Justice noted, in 1955, in the Nottebohm Case: According to the practice of States, to arbitral and judicial decisions and to the opinions of writers, nationality is a legal bond having as its basis a social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties. It may be said to constitute the juridical expression of the fact that the individual upon whom it is conferred, either directly by the law or as the result of an act of the authorities, is in fact more closely connected with the population of the State conferring nationality than with that of any other State. Conferred by a State, it only entitles that State to exercise protection vis-à-vis another State, if it constitutes a translation into juridical terms of the individual's connection with the State which has made him its national.15 This study therefore uses the words ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ interchangeably, to mean the legal bond between an individual and a State (as opposed to the ethnic origin of an Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, Lecture on ‘International Migration Law’, UN Audiovisual Library of International Law [available at http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ls/Goodwin-Gill_IML.html]. See also, Matthew J. Gibney, ‘Should Citizenship be Conditional? The Ethics of Denationalization’, 75 Journal of Politics 2013, pp.646-658, at 647. 15 Nottebohm Case (Liechtenstein v. Guatemala), Second Phase, Judgment of 6 April 1955, p.23. 14 3