Peoples’ Right to a Nationality consubstantial concept of the state, this means, the existence of a nationality presupposes the existence of a sovereign state. 53 Here, international law and legal theory are unanimous, since the former defines nationality as the ‘legal bond between a person and a State’, while the latter analyses it either as ‘the fact that an individual legally belongs to the population making up a State’. 54 The right to nationality is the right to acquire, change and retain a nationality. 55 The right is now exercised as individual rights, but could equally be exercised by groups, communities and people recognised by a state, which confers the right to nationality. E Nationality Rights and Citizenship Rights Nationality differs technically and legally from citizenship, which is a sociopolitical relationship between a person and a country. Citizenship focuses on the internal political life of a state, while nationality is a matter of international law. It is the state of being vested with the rights, privileges and duties on an individual viewed as a member of a society. Citizenship involves the condition of exercising political, civil and social rights. A person can have the nationality of a state without having a sense of belonging that accompanies citizenship. Not all people with the nationality of a particular state are full citizens as some do not have the rights to vote. In mostly federal states, the constituent federated states might confer a type of ‘regional citizenship’ for their natives with regard to political, economic and social rights and services, to the exclusion of other nationals of the federal state. For example, the State of Israel’s Supreme Court decision of October 2013 differentiates between the ‘Israeli citizenship’ for all nationals of the State of Israel and ‘Israeli nationality’ to the constituent Jewish-Israeli, Arab-Israeli, DruzeIsraeli and Circissan-Israeli people within the Israeli State. 56 F Statelessness and Nationality Statelessness is the condition in which an individual has no formal, legal or protective relationship with any recognised state, no matter their emotional national identification. In order words, statelessness is a condition where an individual has no nationality. It can also describe the situation where an individual claims the nationality of a ‘State’, but that ‘State’ is not internationally recognised. Statelessness can also be a situation where a person has lost their nationality for security reasons or other grounds associated with fraud. Finally, it can be a situation involving deprivation of nationality through the discriminatory laws of a state, resulting in lack of ‘effective nationality’ due to structural and administrative causes. The concept of statelessness is enshrined in the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, whose art 1(1) defines a stateless individual as ‘a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its 53 54 55 56 The Right to Nationality in Africa (Report, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights 2015) 13. ibid. ‘OHCHR and the Right to a Nationality’, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (Web Page) <https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/Nationality.aspx> See Jay Ruderman and Yedidia Z Stern, ‘Is “Israeli” a Nationality’, Israeli Democracy Institute (Blog Post, 9 March 2014) <https://en.idi.org.il/articles/6516>. 43