S896 COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF TRANSNATIONAL LAW [56:S855 failed to take hold since 1997, UNHCR and scholars should focus their efforts on the stateless Rohingya in Myanmar or Bajau Laut in Malaysia—neither of whom possess functional nationality. At a high level, UNHCR and scholars also should be concerned about reentrenching formalistic, legal distinctions among peoples. If human rights obligations are, or soon will be, accepted as obligations erga omnes or erga omnes partes, 261 diplomatic protection will be largely obsolete. Everyone will have the right to invoke some official protection, 262 irrespective of nationality. The human rights regime will have progressed far beyond what the drafters of the UDHR, who ideated the right to a nationality to ensure universal access to diplomatic protection, could have imagined. By attempting to expand the right to a nationality, UNHCR and scholars are blowing new life into an old construct. On the one hand, UNHCR and scholars can argue that this is the best or fastest way to ensure that spread of civil and political rights for all. This argument has not been borne out in practice, as States have rejected an expansive interpretation of nationality. On the other, civil and political rights seem capable of developing and spreading along their own trajectory, divorced from nationality. As the practice of New Zealand, Chile, Malawi, and Uruguay has shown, States can and have extended full political membership to non-nationals. Other States, including Estonia, have extended limited political membership—e.g., the right to vote in local elections or hold particular public service positions—to non-nationals or non-citizens. 263 This separate trajecWeekend was “Developing International Law in Challenging Times.” The American Society of International Law has been running a livestream series called “International Law and the Trump Administration,” which questions the likelihood of continued U.S. participation in international law and policy mechanisms. 261. Obligations erga omnes can be enforced by any State, irrespective of whether that State has suffered a direct and particularized injury. Obligations erga omnes partes can be enforced by any State party to a particular treaty regime. Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company, Limited (Belg. v. Spain), Judgment, 1970 I.C.J. Rep. 3, 32 (enumerating several obligations erga omnes, including obligations relating to human rights); Questions Relating to the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite (Belg. v. Senegal), Judgment, 2012 I.C.J. Rep. 422, 449–50 (finding that obligations in the Convention Against Torture are obligations erga omnes partes, notwithstanding the fact that torture was not mentioned in the Barcelona Traction judgment). 262. See Comments from Governments on the Draft International Declaration on Human Rights, supra note 133. 263. See Human Rights Comm., CCPR General Comment No. 25: Article 25 (Participation in Public Affairs and the Right to Vote), U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.7 (July 12, 1996) (suggesting that States’ decisions to extend political rights to non-citizens are relevant to Article 25). Though Article 25 of the ICCPR provides that “[e]very citizen” shall have political rights, limiting the enjoyment of political rights to citizens seems in tension Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2954729