2021] NATIONALITY LAWS 85 I. INTRODUCTION Historically and rhetorically, it is understood that statelessness is often the result of systemic racial discrimination,1 and that when such discrimination entails the denial or deprivation of nationality, it can operate as the first step in larger programs of persecution. 2 Yet, the relationship between statelessness, nationality laws, and international norms of racial non-discrimination has received little scholarly attention,3 notwithstanding that it is estimated that seventy-five percent of the 10–15 million stateless persons globally belong to a minority group. 4 Given that the prohibition on racial discrimination is broadly considered a jus cogens norm of 1 The classic example is the denationalization of German Jews by the Nazi regime. See infra note 2. See also KRISTY A. BELTON, STATELESSNESS IN THE CARIBBEAN: THE PARADOX OF BELONGING IN A POSTNATIONAL WORLD 27– 28 (2017); Amal de Chickera & Joanna Whiteman, Addressing Statelessness Through the Rights to Equality and Non-Discrimination, in SOLVING STATELESSNESS 99 (Laura van Waas & Melanie J. Khanna eds., 2017). 2 PATRICK THORNBERRY, THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON THE ELIMINATION OF ALL FORMS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION: A COMMENTARY 341 (2016) (“Morsink contextualizes the drafting of the right in the UDHR [Universal Declaration of Human Rights] as part of the reaction to Nazi policy that stripped Jews of their citizenship, citing Conot for the claim that deprivation of citizenship was more important in sealing their fate than the Nuremberg Laws.” (citing ROBERT E. CONOT, JUSTICE IN NUREMBERG (1983))); Id. at 341 n.245 (“[T]o be without a nationality or not to be a citizen of any country at all is to stand naked in the world of international affairs. It is to be alone as a person, without protection against the aggression of states . . . . As . . . Nazi practices show, the right to a nationality is not the luxury some people think it is.”). 3 Indeed, this is true of nationality, citizenship, and race discrimination more broadly. For example, the American Journal of International Law has published a total of three articles on nationality and citizenship. See Peter J. Spiro, A New International Law of Citizenship, 105 AM. J. INT’L L. 694 (2011); Sean D. Murphy, U.S. Interpretation of Continuous Nationality Rule, 96 AM. J. INT’L L. 706 (2002); Marian Nash, Loss of Nationality: Expatriating Statute and Administrative Standard of Evidence, 87 AM. J. INT’L L. 598 (1993). It has published one article on ICERD. See Theodor Meron, The Meaning and Reach of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 79 AM. J. INT’L L. 283 (1985). 4 U.N. HIGH COMM’R FOR REFUGEES, THIS IS OUR HOME: STATELESS MINORITIES AND THEIR SEARCH FOR CITIZENSHIP 1 (Nov. 2017). The report notes that: This percentage is based on statistics for stateless populations included in UNHCR’s 2016 Global Trends Report that are known to belong to an ethnic, religious or linguistic minority. It does not account for minority groups that compose a proportion of a known stateless population in a country, but do not form the majority of that population. The percentage also does not include the many stateless minority groups for which UNHCR does not have adequate statistical data.