III. Background and mandates national minority issues. As part of its conflict prevention mandate, the HCNM has been engaged with issues of citizenship for several reasons. Firstly, the benefit of minority protection is bestowed, in some cases, on those having the citizenship of the State. However, as outlined in the 1995 Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, minority rights are part of human rights; restricting minority rights to citizens should be the exception rather than the rule and the exception should be made in clearly defined cases, such as the right to participate in local elections.32 Secondly, leaving vulnerable people in a legal limbo with no possibility to fully access their rights is not only a human rights concern, it is also a threat to long-term stability and the peaceful development of societies: having a large number of statelessness persons creates challenges for the integration of society as a whole, going far beyond the individual.33 The HCNM, therefore, encourages OSCE participating States to grant citizenship to persons who have been stateless for a considerable amount of time in order to facilitate their local inclusion. Some persons still formally possess the citizenship of their country of residence or country of origin but may not be able to enjoy it in practice owing to various obstacles, including access to documents. Granting citizenship in such cases may require cooperation and exchange of information among the States concerned. Thirdly, minority issues often engage the interests of more than one State with regard to the conferral and acquisition of dual or multiple nationalities, especially (but not solely) by persons belonging to national minorities. States may confer citizenship based on preferred linguistic competences, and cultural and historical ties. Such citizenship policies may have an external impact: the HCNM has been involved in situations where citizenship issues could jeopardize the good and friendly relations between States. Such considerations have been further explained in the 2008 Bolzano/ Bozen Recommendations on National Minorities in Inter-State Relations 34 and the 2012 Ljubljana Guidelines on Integration of Diverse Societies 35. At the policy level, the HCNM has been involved in addressing disputed issues of citizenship between individual participating States. Mandated to act confidentially, the High Commissioner has also extended specific recommendations to the States concerned in this regard. At the regional 26