R (Begum) v SIAC; R (Begum) v SSHD; Begum v SSHD territory through child-sensitive, rights-based consular protection’, and referred to the recommendation of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic that countries of origin of foreign fighters take immediate steps towards repatriating the children of fighters ‘as soon as possible’.39 Given the general priority accorded by the family courts of England and Wales to continued contact with a parent if in the best interests of the child, a legal basis for repatriation of a child might have affected Ms Begum’s own position significantly.40 This case, on its ultimate facts, did not raise an issue regarding the British citizen child of a person deprived of British nationality. But it highlights issues which may arise in a future case. It is a striking fact, in this context, that Ms Begum’s third child, a son, was a British citizen, as he was born two or three days before Ms Begum’s own British citizenship was extinguished by the decision of the SSHD.41 There is no evidence that the SSHD had delayed his decision so that the child could be born a British citizen. Had the order taken effect three or four days earlier, the child would not have been a British citizen capable of engaging the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court concerning children. The timing of his mother’s denationalisation, and the difference between the child being born a British citizen and the contrary result, therefore had extremely serious potential consequences for the child. IV CONCLUSION The decision of the Supreme Court represents yet another prompt to reflection as to the very wide provision for deprivation of British citizenship by the SSHD under the BNA 1981 s 40(2). By making clear the paucity of domestic law restraints upon the SSHD, the decision may ultimately have the effect of moving attention to the question — which the Supreme Court did not address — of whether domestic law safeguards, if not reformed, might be found so insufficient as to fall short of the international law norm prohibiting arbitrary deprivation of nationality, which the European Court of Human Rights in recent cases has been willing to find applicable through the broader art 8 ECHR rights. That question looms over the future but will, for the moment, remain unresolved. It also raises important questions concerning the absence of protection from serious harms which may, given the technical nature of the statelessness definition, not be alleviated by 39 40 41 Decision adopted by the Committee under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure, Concerning Communications, UN Docs CRC/C/85/D/79/2019 and CRC/C/85/D/109/2019 (2 November 2020) [9.6]–[9.7] citing Human Rights Council, Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, UN Doc A/HRC/43/57 (28 January 2020). See also Marko Milanovic, ‘Repatriating the Children of Foreign Terrorist Fighters and the Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights’, EJIL:Talk! (Blog Post, 10 November 2020) <https://www.ejiltalk.org/repatriating-the-children-of-foreign-terrorist-fighters-and-theextraterritorial-application-of-human-rights/> criticising the reliance of the Committee on nationality, as the source of jurisdiction, as potentially arbitrary. See, eg, SSHD v AB (Jamaica) [2019] EWCA Civ 661, [2019] 1 WLR 4541, [107] (King LJ), citing ‘[t]he considerable importance which the Family Court places on the right of a child to have a relationship with his parents’ and referring to the decision of James Munby P in Re Q (Implacable Contact Dispute) [2015] EWCA Civ 991; [2016] 2 FLR 287. The father of Ms Begum’s children, to whom she had been married aged 15 by ISIL in an Islamic ceremony, was Dutch national and ISIL recruit Yago Riedijk. It appears that in the case of each child, that child would have been a Dutch national from birth only if (i) the underage purported marriage between Ms Begum and Mr Riedijk was recognised by Dutch law as sufficient to ground Dutch citizenship in their child; or (ii) the child was legally acknowledged as his by Mr Riedijk. 175