Legal briefing: Statelessness and the prohibition on discrimination against Romani communities April 2023 1. INTERNATIONAL AND REGIONAL OBLIGATIONS ON THE PRINCIPLE OF NONDISCRIMINATION AND THE PREVENTION AND REDUCTION OF STATELESSNESS Several international and regional instruments recognise the right to a nationality and construe an obligation for States both to reduce statelessness and to protect stateless persons. 7 The core international instruments are the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954 Convention) and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961 Convention). The 1954 Convention grants stateless people a set of rights depending on their degree of attachment to the State, including the right to work, freedom of movement, identity and travel documents, facilitated naturalisation, and economic and social rights such as housing, education and social security. The 1961 Convention sets out safeguards for the prevention of statelessness, including in the context of conferral or withdrawal of nationality (loss, renunciation or deprivation). It seeks both to prevent statelessness, and to ensure access to remedies. Underlying the 1961 Convention is the notion that while States maintain the right to elaborate the content of their nationality laws, they must do so in compliance with international norms relating to nationality, including by respecting the principle of avoidance of statelessness. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its protocols do not explicitly guarantee a right to nationality, but the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) considers that interferences with the right to a nationality may breach the right to respect for private and family life, enshrined in Article 8 ECHR. 8 This interpretation is also applicable within the European Union legal framework. 9 1.1. Discrimination in nationality rules The prohibition on discrimination is also enshrined across several human right instruments. In the context of nationality and statelessness, there are provisions that specifically prohibit discrimination in the acquisition, change, loss, or deprivation of nationality, including: 7 See, e.g., the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 15), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 24), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Articles 7-8). 8 ECtHR, Genovese v. Malta, application no. 53124/09, judgment of 11 October 2011; Karassev v. Finland, application no. 31414/96, decision of 12 January 1999; Ramadan v. Malta, application no. 76136/12, judgment of 21 June 2016, § 85; Ghoumid and others v. France, applications no. 52273/16, 52285/16, 52290/16, 52294/16 and 52302/16, judgment of 25 June 2020; K2 v. the United Kingdom, application no. 42387/13, decision of 7 February 2017. 9 Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR) guarantees the right to respect for private and family life and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has clarified that Article 7 CFR shall have the same meaning as Article 8 ECHR. See e.g. CJEU, Case C-490/20, V.M.A. v. Stolichna obshtina, rayon ‘Pancharevo’, judgment of 14 December 2021, EU:C:2021:1008, §60: “as is apparent from the Explanations relating to the Charter of Fundamental Rights […], in accordance with Article 52(3) of the Charter, the rights guaranteed in Article 7 thereof have the same meaning and the same scope as those guaranteed in Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, signed in Rome on 4 November 1950”. 3