In Spain, the High National Court272 found the denial of basic human rights, including the lack of documentation and education, to a stateless person who was part of the Urduspeaking Bihari minority in Bangladesh, to constitute discrimination but not persecution, due to lack of evidence and credibility. 273 The applicant was nevertheless granted humanitarian protection because of the severity of the conflict in his country of origin. In Belgium, the Aliens Appeals Board granted refugee status to a stateless asylum seeker from Uzbekistan who after five years of residence abroad was deprived of his Uzbek nationality and passport, and had his name removed from his address in Uzbekistan.274 Accordingly, if he were to re-enter Uzbekistan, the Uzbek authorities would suspect that he had applied for asylum in Belgium (since he would have no documents) and the treatment feared from such imputed political opinion constituted a well-founded fear of being persecuted. The New Zealand RSAA too has considered whether a stateless person’s risk of serious discrimination resulting from the arbitrary revocation of her nationality, could amount to persecution. The case involved a stateless person (who claims to have been a citizen of Israel) and her husband (a citizen of Israel). She claimed to have been arbitrarily stripped of her citizenship by her country of former habitual residence (Israel) because she was Christian, leading to the loss of significant rights attached to nationality (including work, free medical care, social welfare, departure and return to Israel).275 She was unable to fall back on the nationality that she had acquired at birth because the Soviet Union no longer existed and she had not claimed the citizenship of the Russian Federation or the Republic of Tajikistan when leaving for Israel in 1991. The RSAA’s decision is restrictive in that it considers the ‘right’ to nationality to be nothing more than aspirational. However, it recognizes that withdrawal of nationality may constitute persecution. The RSAA explained: ‘it is one thing for a state to withhold nationality, it is a quite different matter when a state, having conferred nationality upon a person, then withdraws it by what in th[is] case … might be characterized … as a “willful act of neglect, discrimination or violation”.276 The RSAA then considered the consequences of rights attached to nationality and found ‘if removing those rights is of sufficient importance that the State sees a fundamental benefit in Spain, High National Court, decision of 3 November 2010, case 555/2009. In 2008, a decision of the High Court of Bangladesh recognized the formerly stateless Urdu-speaking community or Biharis, as citizens of Bangladesh (unless they personally and voluntarily rejected it). Since then most of them have been able to access their rights as citizens, although access to passport remains a problem. See UNHCR, ‘Note on the nationality status of the Urdu-speaking community in Bangladesh’, December 2009, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4b2b90c32.html [accessed 19 July 2013]; and UNHCR submission for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Compilation Report – Universal Periodic Review: Bangladesh, October 2012, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/508640242.html [accessed 19 July 2013] 274 Belgium, Conseil du Contentieux des Etrangers, X v Commissaire general aux refugies et aux apatrides, Decision No. 22144, 28 January 2009. 275 NZ RSAA Appeal No.76077, 19 May 2009. 276 Ibid, para.103. 272 273 48