Grand Challenge 1 ‘Precarious citizenship: The use and misuse of deprivation of nationality’ Moderator: Christophe Paulussen Asser Institute / International Centre for Counterterrorism Panelists: Jawad Fairooz Salam for Democracy and Human Rights Amal de Chickera ISI Matthew Gibney University of Oxford Edward Flynn Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate Audrey Macklin University of Toronto “This is not just about terrorism. Sometimes, when we only focus on terrorism, it is far too narrow. Nevertheless, it must be clear that terrorism laws are seeping into other matters as well, and this partly has to do with the increased scepticism towards migration.” Matthew Gibney University of Oxford 28 The participants then heard the very personal account of Jawad Fairooz who was stripped of his Bahraini citizenship in 2012 for his outspoken critique of the human rights practices of the Bahraini State. He highlighted the Bahraini context and demonstrated the severe consequences when someone is deprived of their nationality. The use of citizenship stripping as a way of silencing human rights defenders is not limited to Fairooz and is a commonly employed tactic to control those who speak out against those in power. This has consequentially contributed to the shrinking of civil society space in a number of countries across the globe. Panellists then looked to the transformation of the UK from a country that very rarely used denationalisation powers to a country that uses them with troubling regularity. The UK is one of the States in which there has been an expansion of deprivation of nationality powers and this tool is now reached for by the Home Secretary with increasing frequency. The idea that deprivation of nationality can only be applied if the individual has a dual citizenship (so as not to render them stateless) has also essentially been voided in the UK, after the introduction of a new law in 2014 allowing for deprivation of nationality of naturalised citizens, even if statelessness results. The UK has further been known to deprive citizenship even in cases where there is no threat to national security and has expanded the reach of this measure to certain domestic crimes. The evolving practice of individual states was explored further in other sessions of ISI’s world Conference on Statelessness, including the session ‘Securitisation of nationality: The case of deprivation of citizenship’ where participants looked in greater depth at the UK and Belgian contexts. They also discussed the increasing ‘securitisation’ of other policies relating to nationality and statelessness such as the application of exclusion provisions relating to protection as a stateless person. In the Grand Challenge session, the underlying dichotomy of understanding citizenship as a right versus a privilege was also discussed. When a state strips a dual national of their citizenship, they view citizenship as a privilege; however for the State left with the individual, citizenship is a right that cannot (any longer) be interfered with and they must then accept the individual in question so as not to leave them stateless. In situations where citizenship is viewed as a privilege rather than a right, the end result can be a race between the two countries to see who can strip citizenship first. This, however, does not serve to reduce the risk of terrorism and it is not in the best interest of the State. The use of other administrative techniques to control a person’s right to enter and remain in their country of citizenship are also being employed increasingly by states, including, for example, passport cancellations or travel bans. Probing further, panellists identified and unpacked a number of fault lines. One of these was the question “is it the right of the State to revoke nationality or the right of the national to retain it?” Through adopting the lens of national sovereignty, the apparent tension between the two can actually be resolved: taking care of one’s citizens and protecting their rights is inherent to state sovereignty i.e. in respecting their international obligations a state is exercising its sovereignty and it is in the interest of this national sovereignty to protect human rights. Another fault line discussed is the perceived tension between the obligation to avoid discrimination and the obligation to avoid statelessness - i.e. can discrimination be justified on the basis that it is needed to prevent statelessness? It was highlighted that States are required to respect both principles, but by only allowing dual citizens to be denationalised, a process of protecting against statelessness becomes, in and of itself, discriminatory and is therefore problematic. This raises the question of whether any deprivation of nationality can be justified, if it cannot be carried out without implicating one or both of these international prescriptions.