State of Statelessness in Bangladesh Court judgment passed in 2008, conferring citizenship to the Urdu-speaking community. Similarly, Section 28(2)(a) of the Bill states that ‘citizenship of persons who obtained Bangladeshi citizenship under the repealed Acts shall prevail, subject to consistency with the provisions of this Act’. Such a provision, seeking to override or negate a judgment or decree, appears inconsistent with the principles of constitutional democracy, where the Constitution is regarded as sovereign, and the judiciary is empowered to interpret and enforce the Constitution. As a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Bangladeshi government is responsible for protecting the rights of every child, including the right to a nationality. The current version of the Bill violates these obligations in a number of its provisions: for example, by arbitrarily stripping individuals of constitutional protection (Section 4[2]b), punitively restricting a child’s right to nationality due to a lack of birth registration or certification (Section 5[2]), and even threatening to restrict the nationality of a child if their parents or grandparents are deemed to be hostile to the state (Section 11).8 The draft legislation even envisages the possibility that citizens could lose their right to nationality if one of their parents is an ‘alien enemy’, ‘denies the existence of Bangladesh’ or is ‘engaged in any activity against Bangladesh’—all ambiguous provisions that could be open to a broad margin of interpretation. Section 20 even grants the government the right to strip naturalised Bangladeshi citizens of their nationality if they express ‘lack of allegiance towards the sovereignty of Bangladesh or the Constitution of Bangladesh through any action or behaviour’—an equally vague stipulation that could enable arbitrary removal of citizenship.9 In a context of discrimination, Urdu-speakers are likely to be especially affected: there have been reports of citizenship applications being stalled due to lack of documentation such as electricity 8 Coalition of Individual Human Rights Defenders Bangladesh, Bangladesh— Civil Society Report on the Implementation of the ICCPR (Replies to the List of Issues CCPR/C/BGD/Q/1), February 6, 2017, p.17. 9 Ibid. 19