106 COLUM. J. RACE & L. [Vol. 11:83 unqualified language about the necessity of eliminating racial and ethnic discrimination in all of its manifestations, the treaty contains an explicit exception for countries’ citizenship and naturalization policies. . . . Practices that would, in short, merit the sternest reproach in nearly every other area of government policy are considered permissible in the area of citizenship.99 Mariner made this observation just a year before the Committee formulated its General Recommendation Thirty, which advanced a significantly narrowed interpretation of the Article 1(3) limitation clauses. This Article returns to the Committee’s Recommendation below, but for now it is important to stress that generous scholarly and Committee interpretations notwithstanding, it is difficult, and possibly counterproductive, to ignore the fact that on its face, the language of Article 1(3) undermines the reach and application of the Convention. As Egon Schwelb rightly points out, with Article 1(3) left unconstrained, under its terms a provision “depriving of their citizenship the citizens of a State Party who belong to a specific racial or ethnic group would be a legal provision ‘concerning nationality’ and ‘concerning citizenship’ and would” therefore be compatible with Article 1(3).100 Needed is a principled approach for “reading down” Article 1(3), one that heeds closely to the 99 Joanne Mariner, Racism, Citizenship and National Identity, 46 DEVELOPMENT 64, 64–65 (2003). Mariner notes in a separate essay that “while adamantly prohibiting racial and ethnic discrimination in other areas, international human rights law falters notably with regard to rules regulating citizenship.” Joanne Mariner, Racism Citizenship and National Identity: A Conceptual Challenge for the UN Racial Conference, FINDLAW (Sept. 3, 2001), https://supreme.findlaw.com/legal-commentary/racism-citizenship-andnational-identity.html [https://perma.cc/YM8W-SQ6J]. Mariner points to ICERD’s inclusion of “an explicit exception for countries’ citizenship and naturalization policies,” noting that this provision specifies “that the convention’s protections against discrimination do not generally extend to legal rules on citizenship and naturalization, although they do bar discrimination against particular nationalities.” Mariner, supra, at 64–65. 100 Egon Schwelb, The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 15 INT’L & COMP. L.Q. 996, 1009 (1966) [hereinafter Schwelb, Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination] (although contending that Article 5(d)(iii) “limits the very wide field of application of Article 1(3), such . . . a provision of this kind would ultimately be incompatible with the Convention.”).