By-passing state power and neutralising state bureaucracies 53 focused on state recognition of individuals and reducing the number of stateless individuals within national territories rather than group rights (Siegelberg 2020). As imperialist systems crumbled (Czarist Russia, Ottoman, Astro-Hungarian) and new states formed during and after WWI, concerns arose regarding the potential statelessness of minority groups, and the instability that this could cause for the developing state system and international organisations, in particular, for the League of Nations (ibid.). These concerns were largely dealt with under the minority treaties that required majority groups in states to provide protections, rights, and citizenship to minority groups within their territories. Under this system, the group—not just the individual—was an important unit of political organisation and able to make appeals to the League of Nations (ibid.). The 1930s saw the rejection of the minority treaties in Poland, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, as well as the rise of fascism which led to mass denaturalisations and denationalisations (Sands 2016; Siegelberg 2020; Zalc 2021). In the majority of cases, denaturalisation was linked either directly or indirectly to membership of a minority group with Jewish people constituting the largest group impacted (Zalc 2021). The human rights framework that emerged in post-WWII, partly in response to the failure of the minority treaties, increasingly focused on the individual as the bearer of rights with groups losing political traction (Siegelberg 2013; Sands 2016; Siegelberg 2020). The Nazi genocide had exposed the dangers of citizenship based solely on racial criteria and international discussions moved on to ensuring balance in the criteria through which individuals acquired citizenship. In the post-WWII years, individual citizenship status was understood to be acquired through one or more of three main avenues: through the citizenship of parents and/or grandparents or jus sanguinis; through birth on the territory or jus soli; and through naturalisation provisions, for example, through marriage, long-term residence, or other significant links to a state (Weil 2001). As the British and other European empires broke up in the post-WWII years, post-colonial citizenships were often based on notions of indigeneity but balanced with these three ways that individuals acquire nationality (Manby 2016; de Chickera, Arraiza et al. 2021). Myanmar’s citizenship framework after independence, as explored in Chapter 4, largely achieved a balance that enabled both indigenous groups and those that had other significant links with the country to acquire nationality and equal citizenship rights including through residency and birth on the territory (de Chickera, Arraiza et al. 2021). Contrastingly under the 1982 Citizenship law, full citizenship is acquired almost exclusively through membership of a state-ascribed list of ‘national ethnic groups,’ and there are no provisions that allow for citizenship acquisition through birth on the territory, marriage to a citizen, long-term residence, or other objective criteria.35 As notions of citizenship and belonging in Myanmar were increasingly consolidated around notions of belonging to an ethnic group, citizenship in