A State may impose measures aimed at restricting travel abroad (e.g., restrictions on travel abroad for terrorist purposes) and thereby limit the right to leave one’s own country, provided they meet the proportionality test, and are furthermore in line with decisions of the Security Council on this matter.149 The UDHR sets out in Article 12 that “[n]o one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence” and under Article 16(3) that “[t]he family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” Notably, States have specific obligations with respect to protecting private and family life under several widely ratified treaties, including Articles 17(1) and 23 of the ICCPR, Article 10 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 16 of the CRC, Article 23 of the CRPD and Article 44 of the ICRMW. Regional instruments such as the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 8) also provide for the right to private and family life. Interference with the right to private and family life should be taken into consideration within a State’s assessment of whether withdrawal is a proportionate measure to achieve the legitimate aim of the State.150 This includes cases where nationality is not granted to an individual in the first place owing to the marital status of that individual’s parent(s).151 The right to private and family life is also potentially infringed when a person or family has to leave or is unable to return to their country of residence as a result of withdrawal of nationality as this can have severe consequences on the individual, including as a result of family separation.152 149 See e.g., Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 27 (Freedom of Movement), 2 November 1999, CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.9, para. 14. 150 Hoti v Croatia, European Court of Human Rights, App. no. 63311/14, 26 April 2018, para. 122: “… the Court reiterates that measures restricting the right to reside in a country may, in certain cases, entail a violation of Article 8 of the Convention if they create disproportionate repercussions on the private or family life, or both, of the individuals concerned. … Moreover, the Court has held that in some cases, such as in the case at issue, Article 8 [of the European Convention on Human Rights] may involve a positive obligation to ensure an effective enjoyment of the applicant’s private and/or family life.” See also Slivenko v Latvia, European Court of Human Rights, App. no. 4832/199, 9 October 2003, para. 122: “The Court considers that schemes such as the present one for the withdrawal of foreign troops and their families, based on a general finding that their removal is necessary for national security, cannot as such be deemed to be contrary to Article 8 of the [European Convention on Human Rights]. However, application of such a scheme without any possibility of taking into account the individual circumstances of persons not exempted by the domestic law from removal is in the Court's view not compatible with the requirements of that Article. In order to strike a fair balance between the competing interests of the individual and the community, the removal of a person should not be enforced where such measure is disproportionate to the legitimate aim pursued. In the present case the question is whether the applicants' specific situation was such as to outweigh any danger to national security based on their family ties with former foreign military officers.” 151 See e.g., Genovese v Malta, European Court of Human Rights, App. no. 53124/09,11 October 2011, paras. 29-30. 152 Slivenko v Latvia, European Court of Human Rights, App. no. 4832/199, 9 October 2003, para. 96: “As regards the facts of the present case, the first applicant arrived in Latvia in 1959, when she was only one month old. Until 1999, by which time she was 40 years of age, she continued to live in Latvia. She attended school there, found employment and married. Her daughter, the second applicant, was born in Latvia in 1981 and lived there until the age of 18, when she was compelled to leave the country together with her mother, having just completed her secondary education. … It is undisputed that the applicants left Latvia against their own will, as a result of the unsuccessful outcome of the proceedings concerning the legality of their stay in Latvia. They were thus removed from the country where they had developed, uninterruptedly since birth, the network of personal, social and economic relations that make up the private life of every human being. Furthermore, as a result of the UNHCR > GUIDELINES ON STATELESSNESS NO.5 38

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