at the request of a decision of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers in 1996.13 The document included ‘Fundamental Principles’ and ten ‘Specific Principles and Rules’ that worked towards the avoidance of statelessness in the citizenship regimes of the new countries. The Principles included a vast array of safeguards, not all of which were adhered to, such as the right to return to and/or remain in the country of habitual residence with full economic and social rights. However, as recommended in The Principles, Successor States used the principle of continuity of internal (republican) citizenship in the creation of their new internal citizenship laws.14As a result, republican citizenship took on a sudden new importance, as it became the basis for the emerging States to avoid large-scale statelessness within the region. When the SFRY Successor States chose to grant nationality based upon the list of names in their republican nationality registers, the result had both positive and negative aspects. The positive side was that in principle, statelessness was prevented, as all persons were presumed to be registered in one of the republican nationality registers. The negative aspect of this approach, with serious repercussions for thousands of people, was that those who were not registered in the Successor State in which they had permanent residence were made foreigners in that state overnight. Two of the states, Slovenia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, thus offered facilitated access to nationality during a transitional period to former SFRY citizens who were permanently residing in the state. In the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the Citizenship Law also included a transitional provision for former SFRY citizens. However, UNHCR noted that the conditions for acquisition of citizenship under these provisions were “quasi-identical” to the provisions for acquisition of citizenship through ordinary naturalization. In other words, they did not really facilitate access to citizenship for former SFRY citizens. In Croatia, acquisition of citizenship was not facilitated and permanently resident former SFRY citizens could only acquire citizenship through regular naturalization procedures.15 In addition to the continuity of republican citizenship, following the breakup of SFRY most of the Successor States of Yugoslavia provided privileged access to the dominant ethnic group.16 This policy gave an advantage to some citizens over others – in a way that had a discriminatory impact on many. Vulnerable and marginalized minority groups were particularly affected. In some cases they risked becoming stateless due, in part, to not being able to prove their former republican nationality or to apply for citizenship because 13 Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 16 January 1997, ‘Principles on Citizenship Legislation Concerning the Parties to the Peace Agreements on Bosnia and Herzegovina’, the Council of Europe in co-operation with UNHCR. 14 The 1992 Citizenship Act of Bosnia and Herzegovina was based on the principle of legal continuity but was amended in 1993 to grant citizenship automatically to all citizens of the former SFRY who resided in the Republic on 6 April 1992; see UNHCR, Regional Bureau for Europe (1997), ‘Citizenship and Prevention of Statelessness Linked to the Disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’, European Series 3(1): June 1997. 15 UNHCR, Regional Bureau for Europe (1997), ‘Citizenship and Prevention of Statelessness Linked to the Disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’, European Series 3(1): June 1997. 16 Štiks, I. (2010), ‘A Laboratory of Citizenship: Shifting Conceptions of Citizenship in Yugoslavia and Its Successor States’, CITSEE working paper, February 2010. 8