PRACTICAL GUIDE ON NATIONALITY (b) an accumulation of various measures, including violations of human rights, which is sufficiently severe as to affect an individual in a similar manner to an act referred to in point (a). 2. Acts of persecution as qualified in paragraph 1 may, inter alia, take the form of: (a) acts of physical or mental violence, including acts of sexual violence; (b) legal, administrative, police or judicial measures which are in themselves discriminatory or which are implemented in a discriminatory manner; (c) prosecution or punishment which is disproportionate or discriminatory; Article 15 QR ( 105) – Serious harm Serious harm as referred to in Article 3(6) consists of: (a) the death penalty or execution; (b) torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of an applicant in the country of origin; or (c) a serious and individual threat to a civilian’s life or person by reason of indiscriminate violence in situations of international or internal armed conflict. As a case officer, you should look into the domestic legislation on nationality or the policy of the home country and consider how it is applied in practice. Remember that even an apparently neutral law or policy may be applied in a discriminatory fashion. Discrimination should be sufficiently serious to amount to persecution Discriminatory laws or the application of nationality laws in a discriminatory manner may only qualify as an act of persecution if the impact is found to be sufficiently severe. Accordingly, you need to consider whether they create aggravating circumstances. This could include severe consequences of a substantially prejudicial nature for the applicant or if they occur as an accumulation of other various discriminatory measures that could create a risk of persecution or serious harm in case of return. For example, discriminatory practices can be considered as amounting to persecution where: • they result in the applicant becoming stateless thereby leading to the deprivation of the applicant’s fundamental rights attached to nationality, such as the right to reside and not be expelled; and • the applicant belongs to a specific ethnic or religious group that has a particularly strong, longstanding, genuine and effective connection to the territory. (105) See also Article 15 QD (recast). 67