essay on citizenship and human rights for class 4

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Essay on Human Rights: Samples in 500 and 1500

• Updated on  
• Jun 20, 2024

Essay writing is an integral part of the school curriculum and various academic and competitive exams like IELTS , TOEFL , SAT , UPSC , etc. It is designed to test your command of the English language and how well you can gather your thoughts and present them in a structure with a flow. To master your ability to write an essay, you must read as much as possible and practise on any given topic. This blog brings you a detailed guide on how to write an essay on Human Rights , with useful essay samples on Human rights.

This Blog Includes:

The basic human rights, 200 words essay on human rights, 500 words essay on human rights, 500+ words essay on human rights in india, 1500 words essay on human rights, importance of human rights, essay on human rights pdf, what are human rights.

Human rights mark everyone as free and equal, irrespective of age, gender, caste, creed, religion and nationality. The United Nations adopted human rights in light of the atrocities people faced during the Second World War. On the 10th of December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Its adoption led to the recognition of human rights as the foundation for freedom, justice and peace for every individual. Although it’s not legally binding, most nations have incorporated these human rights into their constitutions and domestic legal frameworks. Human rights safeguard us from discrimination and guarantee that our most basic needs are protected.

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Before we move on to the essays on human rights, let’s check out the basics of what they are.

Also Read: What are Human Rights?

Also Read: 7 Impactful Human Rights Movies Everyone Must Watch!

Here is a 200-word short sample essay on basic Human Rights.

Human rights are a set of rights given to every human being regardless of their gender, caste, creed, religion, nation, location or economic status. These are said to be moral principles that illustrate certain standards of human behaviour. Protected by law , these rights are applicable everywhere and at any time. Basic human rights include the right to life, right to a fair trial, right to remedy by a competent tribunal, right to liberty and personal security, right to own property, right to education, right of peaceful assembly and association, right to marriage and family, right to nationality and freedom to change it, freedom of speech, freedom from discrimination, freedom from slavery, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of movement, right of opinion and information, right to adequate living standard and freedom from interference with privacy, family, home and correspondence.

Also Read: Law Courses

Check out this 500-word long essay on Human Rights.

Every person has dignity and value. One of the ways that we recognise the fundamental worth of every person is by acknowledging and respecting their human rights. Human rights are a set of principles concerned with equality and fairness. They recognise our freedom to make choices about our lives and develop our potential as human beings. They are about living a life free from fear, harassment or discrimination.

Human rights can broadly be defined as the basic rights that people worldwide have agreed are essential. These include the right to life, the right to a fair trial, freedom from torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to health, education and an adequate standard of living. These human rights are the same for all people everywhere – men and women, young and old, rich and poor, regardless of our background, where we live, what we think or believe. This basic property is what makes human rights’ universal’.

Human rights connect us all through a shared set of rights and responsibilities. People’s ability to enjoy their human rights depends on other people respecting those rights. This means that human rights involve responsibility and duties towards other people and the community. Individuals have a responsibility to ensure that they exercise their rights with consideration for the rights of others. For example, when someone uses their right to freedom of speech, they should do so without interfering with someone else’s right to privacy.

Governments have a particular responsibility to ensure that people can enjoy their rights. They must establish and maintain laws and services that enable people to enjoy a life in which their rights are respected and protected. For example, the right to education says that everyone is entitled to a good education. Therefore, governments must provide good quality education facilities and services to their people. If the government fails to respect or protect their basic human rights, people can take it into account.

Values of tolerance, equality and respect can help reduce friction within society. Putting human rights ideas into practice can help us create the kind of society we want to live in. There has been tremendous growth in how we think about and apply human rights ideas in recent decades. This growth has had many positive results – knowledge about human rights can empower individuals and offer solutions for specific problems.

Human rights are an important part of how people interact with others at all levels of society – in the family, the community, school, workplace, politics and international relations. Therefore, people everywhere must strive to understand what human rights are. When people better understand human rights, it is easier for them to promote justice and the well-being of society. 

Also Read: Important Articles in Indian Constitution

Here is a human rights essay focused on India.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. It has been rightly proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Created with certain unalienable rights….” Similarly, the Indian Constitution has ensured and enshrined Fundamental rights for all citizens irrespective of caste, creed, religion, colour, sex or nationality. These basic rights, commonly known as human rights, are recognised the world over as basic rights with which every individual is born.

In recognition of human rights, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was made on the 10th of December, 1948. This declaration is the basic instrument of human rights. Even though this declaration has no legal bindings and authority, it forms the basis of all laws on human rights. The necessity of formulating laws to protect human rights is now being felt all over the world. According to social thinkers, the issue of human rights became very important after World War II concluded. It is important for social stability both at the national and international levels. Wherever there is a breach of human rights, there is conflict at one level or the other.

Given the increasing importance of the subject, it becomes necessary that educational institutions recognise the subject of human rights as an independent discipline. The course contents and curriculum of the discipline of human rights may vary according to the nature and circumstances of a particular institution. Still, generally, it should include the rights of a child, rights of minorities, rights of the needy and the disabled, right to live, convention on women, trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation etc.

Since the formation of the United Nations , the promotion and protection of human rights have been its main focus. The United Nations has created a wide range of mechanisms for monitoring human rights violations. The conventional mechanisms include treaties and organisations, U.N. special reporters, representatives and experts and working groups. Asian countries like China argue in favour of collective rights. According to Chinese thinkers, European countries lay stress upon individual rights and values while Asian countries esteem collective rights and obligations to the family and society as a whole.

With the freedom movement the world over after World War II, the end of colonisation also ended the policy of apartheid and thereby the most aggressive violation of human rights. With the spread of education, women are asserting their rights. Women’s movements play an important role in spreading the message of human rights. They are fighting for their rights and supporting the struggle for human rights of other weaker and deprived sections like bonded labour, child labour, landless labour, unemployed persons, Dalits and elderly people.

Unfortunately, violation of human rights continues in most parts of the world. Ethnic cleansing and genocide can still be seen in several parts of the world. Large sections of the world population are deprived of the necessities of life i.e. food, shelter and security of life. Right to minimum basic needs viz. Work, health care, education and shelter are denied to them. These deprivations amount to the negation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Also Read: Human Rights Courses

Check out this detailed 1500-word essay on human rights.

The human right to live and exist, the right to equality, including equality before the law, non-discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, and equality of opportunity in matters of employment, the right to freedom of speech and expression, assembly, association, movement, residence, the right to practice any profession or occupation, the right against exploitation, prohibiting all forms of forced labour, child labour and trafficking in human beings, the right to freedom of conscience, practice and propagation of religion and the right to legal remedies for enforcement of the above are basic human rights. These rights and freedoms are the very foundations of democracy.

Obviously, in a democracy, the people enjoy the maximum number of freedoms and rights. Besides these are political rights, which include the right to contest an election and vote freely for a candidate of one’s choice. Human rights are a benchmark of a developed and civilised society. But rights cannot exist in a vacuum. They have their corresponding duties. Rights and duties are the two aspects of the same coin.

Liberty never means license. Rights presuppose the rule of law, where everyone in the society follows a code of conduct and behaviour for the good of all. It is the sense of duty and tolerance that gives meaning to rights. Rights have their basis in the ‘live and let live’ principle. For example, my right to speech and expression involves my duty to allow others to enjoy the same freedom of speech and expression. Rights and duties are inextricably interlinked and interdependent. A perfect balance is to be maintained between the two. Whenever there is an imbalance, there is chaos.

A sense of tolerance, propriety and adjustment is a must to enjoy rights and freedom. Human life sans basic freedom and rights is meaningless. Freedom is the most precious possession without which life would become intolerable, a mere abject and slavish existence. In this context, Milton’s famous and oft-quoted lines from his Paradise Lost come to mind: “To reign is worth ambition though in hell/Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”

However, liberty cannot survive without its corresponding obligations and duties. An individual is a part of society in which he enjoys certain rights and freedom only because of the fulfilment of certain duties and obligations towards others. Thus, freedom is based on mutual respect’s rights. A fine balance must be maintained between the two, or there will be anarchy and bloodshed. Therefore, human rights can best be preserved and protected in a society steeped in morality, discipline and social order.

Violation of human rights is most common in totalitarian and despotic states. In the theocratic states, there is much persecution, and violation in the name of religion and the minorities suffer the most. Even in democracies, there is widespread violation and infringement of human rights and freedom. The women, children and the weaker sections of society are victims of these transgressions and violence.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights’ main concern is to protect and promote human rights and freedom in the world’s nations. In its various sessions held from time to time in Geneva, it adopts various measures to encourage worldwide observations of these basic human rights and freedom. It calls on its member states to furnish information regarding measures that comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights whenever there is a complaint of a violation of these rights. In addition, it reviews human rights situations in various countries and initiates remedial measures when required.

The U.N. Commission was much concerned and dismayed at the apartheid being practised in South Africa till recently. The Secretary-General then declared, “The United Nations cannot tolerate apartheid. It is a legalised system of racial discrimination, violating the most basic human rights in South Africa. It contradicts the letter and spirit of the United Nations Charter. That is why over the last forty years, my predecessors and I have urged the Government of South Africa to dismantle it.”

Now, although apartheid is no longer practised in that country, other forms of apartheid are being blatantly practised worldwide. For example, sex apartheid is most rampant. Women are subject to abuse and exploitation. They are not treated equally and get less pay than their male counterparts for the same jobs. In employment, promotions, possession of property etc., they are most discriminated against. Similarly, the rights of children are not observed properly. They are forced to work hard in very dangerous situations, sexually assaulted and exploited, sold and bonded for labour.

The Commission found that religious persecution, torture, summary executions without judicial trials, intolerance, slavery-like practices, kidnapping, political disappearance, etc., are being practised even in the so-called advanced countries and societies. The continued acts of extreme violence, terrorism and extremism in various parts of the world like Pakistan, India, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Somalia, Algeria, Lebanon, Chile, China, and Myanmar, etc., by the governments, terrorists, religious fundamentalists, and mafia outfits, etc., is a matter of grave concern for the entire human race.

Violation of freedom and rights by terrorist groups backed by states is one of the most difficult problems society faces. For example, Pakistan has been openly collaborating with various terrorist groups, indulging in extreme violence in India and other countries. In this regard the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva adopted a significant resolution, which was co-sponsored by India, focusing on gross violation of human rights perpetrated by state-backed terrorist groups.

The resolution expressed its solidarity with the victims of terrorism and proposed that a U.N. Fund for victims of terrorism be established soon. The Indian delegation recalled that according to the Vienna Declaration, terrorism is nothing but the destruction of human rights. It shows total disregard for the lives of innocent men, women and children. The delegation further argued that terrorism cannot be treated as a mere crime because it is systematic and widespread in its killing of civilians.

Violation of human rights, whether by states, terrorists, separatist groups, armed fundamentalists or extremists, is condemnable. Regardless of the motivation, such acts should be condemned categorically in all forms and manifestations, wherever and by whomever they are committed, as acts of aggression aimed at destroying human rights, fundamental freedom and democracy. The Indian delegation also underlined concerns about the growing connection between terrorist groups and the consequent commission of serious crimes. These include rape, torture, arson, looting, murder, kidnappings, blasts, and extortion, etc.

Violation of human rights and freedom gives rise to alienation, dissatisfaction, frustration and acts of terrorism. Governments run by ambitious and self-seeking people often use repressive measures and find violence and terror an effective means of control. However, state terrorism, violence, and human freedom transgressions are very dangerous strategies. This has been the background of all revolutions in the world. Whenever there is systematic and widespread state persecution and violation of human rights, rebellion and revolution have taken place. The French, American, Russian and Chinese Revolutions are glowing examples of human history.

The first war of India’s Independence in 1857 resulted from long and systematic oppression of the Indian masses. The rapidly increasing discontent, frustration and alienation with British rule gave rise to strong national feelings and demand for political privileges and rights. Ultimately the Indian people, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, made the British leave India, setting the country free and independent.

Human rights and freedom ought to be preserved at all costs. Their curtailment degrades human life. The political needs of a country may reshape Human rights, but they should not be completely distorted. Tyranny, regimentation, etc., are inimical of humanity and should be resisted effectively and united. The sanctity of human values, freedom and rights must be preserved and protected. Human Rights Commissions should be established in all countries to take care of human freedom and rights. In cases of violation of human rights, affected individuals should be properly compensated, and it should be ensured that these do not take place in future.

These commissions can become effective instruments in percolating the sensitivity to human rights down to the lowest levels of governments and administrations. The formation of the National Human Rights Commission in October 1993 in India is commendable and should be followed by other countries.

Also Read: Law Courses in India

Human rights are of utmost importance to seek basic equality and human dignity. Human rights ensure that the basic needs of every human are met. They protect vulnerable groups from discrimination and abuse, allow people to stand up for themselves, and follow any religion without fear and give them the freedom to express their thoughts freely. In addition, they grant people access to basic education and equal work opportunities. Thus implementing these rights is crucial to ensure freedom, peace and safety.

Human Rights Day is annually celebrated on the 10th of December.

Human Rights Day is celebrated to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UNGA in 1948.

Some of the common Human Rights are the right to life and liberty, freedom of opinion and expression, freedom from slavery and torture and the right to work and education.

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We hope our sample essays on Human Rights have given you some great ideas. For more information on such interesting blogs, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu .

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Being a Good Citizen (Social Studies): Class 4

September 28, 2021 by studymumbai Leave a Comment

Being a good citizen (responsibilities of a good citizen) is a chapter in Social Studies for Class 4 students. Find notes, questions and answers.

Question: What do you understand by the term civics?

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Answer: Civics is the study of human rights and responsibilities of citizens , the governance and the environment in which our society is found.

Question: Why is it important to study civics?

Answer: It is important to study civics because it helps to:

• Understand human rights .
• Understand duties and responsibilities of citizens.
• Promote peace and security in our society.
• Understand and uphold our culture.

Question: Define civic sense.

Answer: Civic sense is nothing but social ethics .It is the consideration by the people for the unspoken norms of society.

Question: Who is a citizen? Explain the ways to be a good citizen.

Answer: A person who is a member of a particular town or city is a citizen. The ways to be a good citizen are:

• Be honest and trustworthy.
• Follow rules and laws.
• Respect the rights of others.
• Take responsibility of your actions.
• Protect the environment.

Question: What do you understand by the term neighbours ? Mention the importance of a good neighbour.

Answer: Neighbours are the people who live near us and their behaviour influences our daily life.

The importance of a good neighbor are :

• A good neighbours makes everyone feel comfortable.
• They should have a friendly relationship with each other.
• A good neighbour is the one who is always willing to help others

Question: Differentiate between private and public properties .

PRIVATE PROPERTY

Things which we bought from our personal income are personal properties. Examples: house, car, cycle, book, etc.

PUBLIC PROPERTY

Properties that are created from the income collected from the public in the form of taxes are public properties. Examples: libraries, schools, public transport – train, roads, etc..

Question: Give steps to take care of –(i)school premises (ii)parks.

SCHOOL PREMISES

• We should not write on school walls or scratch the desks.
• Throw waste in dustbin.
• Switch off the fans and lights when not in use.
• The playground should be kept clean.
• We should not pluck flowers or damage plants.
• We should not throw rubbish or eatables in the park.
• Always use dustbins to throw waste.
• If animals litter in the park it should be thrown in the waste bin.

Question: GIVE ONE WORD FOR THE FOLLOWING

• Property created from the taxes – Public Property
• The unspoken norms of society – Civic sense
• People who live around us – Neighbours
• Procedure to elect government – Elections
• Place to borrow books or magazines –Library
• Buildings to understand about our past – Monuments
• Blackboard – school property
• Those who were born in India – Indian citizens
• Duty of a citizen – pay tax
• Fundamental Right – freedom of religions
• public property – hospitals

Question: Fill in the blanks:

• Civic sense is nothing but social ethics
• Citizen have rights that are given by the country’s Constitution
• Neighbours should have a friendly relationship with each other.
• Voting gives a sense of empowerment to every individual.
• To be a good citizen always be honest and trustworthy
• Silence should be maintained while offering the prayers.
• Every citizen who is above the age of 18 has a right to vote.
• Foreigners who come to India as tourist or on business are called ___.
• In 1955,the Parliament passed the ____ to deal with the issue of citizenship.
• Foreigners married to Indian citizens can acquire citizenship by ________.
• Colleges _____, ____ and _____ are built and maintained by the government.
• A good citizen obeys ____ of the country.

Question: Write true or false:

• In a school we should scribble on the walls – False
• We should vote responsibly – True
• We should respect the rights of others – True
• Elections are held in every country to select the government – True
• We can use the personal things of others without their permission – False
• A hospital is an institution which provides treatment to the sick or injured – True
• Historical monuments are a part of our rich heritage – True
• An Indian citizen has the social and cultural right to represent India in any international event.
• We should not pay the taxes on time – False
• Public property make our lives more comfortable – True

Question: Why participation in voting is necessary?

Answer: The participation in voting is necessary because :

• It is a basic human right.
• It gives us the right to voice out our choice.
• It gives sense of empowerment to every individual.
• If we do not caste our vote, corrupt officials may misuse our votes illegally.

Question: How do people born outside India before 26th January 1950 become Indian citizens?

Question: How many Fundamental Rights are guaranteed by the Indian Constitution? a. five b. six c. seven

Question: Which of the following person cannot be a citizen of India?

• a. One who was lived in India for four years
• b. One who is born in India
• c. One whose parents or grandparents were born in India

Question: Who among the following are the citizens of India?

• a. Those who migrated to India from Pakistan before 26 January 1950
• b. Those who migrated to Pakistan from India before 15 August 1947
• c. Those who migrated to India from Pakistan after 1950

Question: What is public property also known as?

• a. national property
• b. private property
• c. international property

Question: Who is an alien?

Question: Give some examples of school property.

Question: Write a short note on civic sense.

Question: How can we take care of public property?

Question: How is citizenship obtained through naturalisation?

Question: Mention any three rights of a citizen

Question: Mention any three duties of a citizen.

Question: Elections represent an action that is both our right and duty. Discuss.

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Cbse class 4 social studies: our rights and duties.

• Right to Equality
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Human Rights Essay in english for Children and Students

Table of Contents

Human Rights Essay: Human Rights are basically the rights that every person has by virtue of being a human being. These are protected as legal rights ranging from municipal to international law. Human rights are universal. This is to say that these are applicable everywhere and at every time. Human rights are said to be a set of norms that portray certain standards of human behaviour. Protected as legal rights in municipal as well as international law, these rights are known to be incontrovertible fundamental rights that a person is entitled to just because he or she is a human being.

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Long and Short Essay on Human Rights in English

Here are essays on Human Rights of varying lengths to help you with the topic in your exams/school assignments. You can choose any Human Rights essay as per your need and requirement:

Human Rights Essay 1 (200 words)

Human rights are a set of rights that are given to every human being regardless of his/her gender, caste, creed, religion, nation, location or economic status. These are said to be moral principles that illustrate certain standards of human behavior. Protected by law, these rights are applicable everywhere and at every time.

Basic human rights include the right to life, right to fair trial, right to remedy by competent tribunal, right to liberty and personal security, right to own property, right to education, right of peaceful assembly and association, right to marriage and family, right to nationality and freedom to change it, freedom of speech, freedom from discrimination, freedom from slavery, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of movement, right of opinion and information, right to adequate living standard and freedom from interference with privacy, family, home and correspondence.

While these rights are protected by law, many of these are still violated by people for different reasons. Some of these rights are even violated by the state. The United Nations committees have been formed in order to ensure that every individual enjoys these basic rights. Governments of different countries and many non-government organizations have also been formed to monitor and protect these rights.

Human Rights Essay 2 (300 words)

Human rights are norms that illustrate certain standards of human behaviour. These are fundamental rights to which every individual is inherently entitled just because he or she is a human being. These rights are protected by law. Here is a look at some of the basic human rights:

• Right to Life

Every individual has the inherent right to live. Every human being has the right of not being killed by another person.

• Right to Fair Trial

Every person has the right to fair trial by an impartial court. This includes the right to be heard within a reasonable time, right to public hearing and right to counsel.

• Freedom of Thought, Conscience and Religion

Every person has the freedom of thought and conscience. He/she also has the freedom to choose his/her religion and is also free to change it at any time.

• Freedom from Slavery

Slavery and slave trade is prohibited. However, these are still practised illegally in some parts of the world.

• Freedom from Torture

Torture is prohibited under the international law. Every person has freedom from torture.

Other universal human rights include right to liberty and personal security, freedom of speech, right to remedy by competent tribunal, freedom from discrimination, right to nationality and freedom to change it, right to marriage and family, freedom of movement, right to own property, right to education, right of peaceful assembly and association, freedom from interference with privacy, family, home and correspondence, right to participate in government and in free elections, right of opinion and information, right to adequate living standard, right to social security and right to social order that articulates this document.

Though protected by law, many of these rights are violated by people and even by the state. However, many organizations have been formed to monitor the violation of human rights. These organizations take steps to protect these rights.

Human Rights Essay 3 (400 words)

Human rights are those rights that every person on this earth is entitled to merely on account of being a human being. These rights are universal and are protected by law. The idea of human rights and liberty has existed since centuries. However, it has evolved over the period of time. Here is a detailed look at the concept of human rights.

Universal Human Rights

Human rights include basic rights that are given to every human being regardless of his caste, creed, religion, gender or nationality. Here is a look at the universal human rights:

• Right to Life, Liberty and Personal Security
• Right to Equality
• Right to Remedy by Competent Tribunal
• Right to Recognition as a Person before law
• Freedom from Discrimination
• Freedom from Arbitrary Arrest and Exile
• Right to be Considered Innocent until Proven Guilty
• Right to Fair Public Hearing
• Freedom of Movement
• Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
• Right to Asylum in Other Countries from Persecution
• Right to Nationality and Freedom to Change it
• Right to Marriage and Family
• Right to Education
• Right to Own Property
• Right of Peaceful Assembly and Association
• Right to Participate in Government and in Free Elections
• Freedom of Belief and Religion
• Freedom of Opinion and Information
• Right to Adequate Living Standard
• Right to Participate in the Cultural Life of Community
• Right to Social Security
• Right to Desirable Work and to Join Trade Unions
• Right to Rest and Leisure
• Right to Social Order that Articulates this Document
• Freedom from State or Personal Interference in the Above Rights

Violation of Human Rights

Though human rights are protected by various laws, these are still violated by people, groups and even by the state at times. For instance, freedom from torture is often violated by the state during interrogations. Similarly, freedom from slavery is said to be a basic human right. However, slavery and slave trade is still carried out illegally. Many institutions have been formed to monitor human right abuses. Governments and certain non-government organizations also keep a check on these.

Every individual deserves to enjoy the basic human rights. At times, some of these rights are denied or abused by the state. Government is taking measures to monitor these abuses with help from certain non-government organizations.

Human Rights Essay 4 (500 words)

Human rights are said to be universal rights that every person is entitled to regardless of his/her gender, caste, creed, religion, culture, social/ economic status or location. These are norms that depict certain standards of human behaviour and are protected by law.

Basic Human Rights

Human rights have been divided into two broad categories. These are the civil and political rights, and the social rights that also include the economic and cultural rights. Here is a detailed look at the basic human rights given to every individual:

Every human being on earth has the right to live. Each individual has the right of not being killed by anyone and this right is protected by the law. However, this right is subject to issues such as death penalty, self defence, abortion, euthanasia and war.

• Freedom of Speech

Every human being has the right to speak freely and voice his opinions in public. However, this right comes with certain limitations such as obscenity, slur and crime provocation.

Every state gives its citizens the right to think freely and form conscientious beliefs. An individual also has the right to follow any religion of his choice and change it as per his free will at any point in time.

Under this right every individual has the right to fair trial by impartial court, right to be heard within reasonable time, right to counsel, right to public hearing and right to interpretation.

As per the international law, every individual has the right to freedom from torture. This has been prohibited since the mid 20 th century.

This means that every individual has the right to travel, live, work or study in any part of the state he resides in.

As per this right, slavery and slave trades are prohibited in every form. However, unfortunately these ill practices still go on illegally.

While every human being is entitled to human rights, these rights are often violated. The violation of these rights occurs when actions by state ignore, deny or abuse these rights.

The United Nations committees are set up to keep a check on human rights abuses. Many national institutions, non-governmental organizations and governments also monitor these to ensure that individuals are not denied of their basic rights.

These organizations work towards spreading awareness about the human rights so that people are well informed about the rights they have. They also protest against inhumane practices. These protests have led to calls for action many a times and eventually improved the situation.

Human rights are the basic rights given to every individual. Known to be universal, these rights are guarded by the law. However, unfortunately many a times these are violated by states, individuals or groups. It is almost inhuman to deprive a person of these basic rights. This is the reason why many organizations have been established to guard these rights.

Human Rights Essay 5 (600 words)

Human rights are said to be incontrovertible rights that every person on earth is entitled to just because he/ she is a human being. These rights are inherent in every human being irrespective of his/her gender, culture, religion, nation, location, caste, creed or economic status. The idea of human rights has been there for much of the human history. However, the concept differed in the earlier times. Here is a detailed look at this concept.

Classification of Human Rights

Human rights have broadly been classified into two categorizes at the international level: civil and political rights, and social rights that include economic and cultural rights.

• Civil and Political Rights

Also known as classic rights, these limit the government’s power in respect of actions impacting individual’s autonomy. It grants people the chance to contribute in the participation of government and determination of laws.

• Social Rights

These rights direct the government to act in a positive and interventionist way in order to devise conditions required for human life and development. Government of each country is expected to ensure the well-being of all its citizens. Every individual has the right to social security.

Here is a look at the basic human rights for every individual:

Every human being has the right to life. This right is protected by law. Every person is entitled to the right of not being killed by another person. This right is, however, subject to the issues of self defence, capital punishment, abortion, war and euthanasia. As per human rights activists, death penalty violates the right to life.

Every individual has the freedom of thought and conscience. He/she can think freely and hold conscientious beliefs. A person also has the freedom to choose and change his religion at any point in time.

This means that a citizen of a state has the right to travel, reside, work or study in any part of that state. However, this should be within the respect for rights of others.

Torture is prohibited under the international law since the mid-20 th century. Even though torture is considered to be immoral, organizations that monitor violation of human rights report that states use this extensively for interrogation and punishment. Many individuals and groups also inflict torture on others for different reasons.

Every individual has the right to fair trial by a competent and impartial court. This right also includes the right to be heard within reasonable time, right to public hearing, right to counsel and right to interpretation. This right has been defined in various regional and international human rights instruments.

As per this right, no one shall be held in slavery. Slavery and slave trades are said to be prohibited in all forms. However, despite this slave trade still goes on in many parts of the world. Many social groups are working to curb the issue.

Every individual has the right to speak freely and express his opinion. This is sometimes also referred to as the freedom of expression. However, this right is not given in absolute in any country. It is usually subject to certain limitations such as obscenity, defamation and provocation for violence or crime, etc.

Human Rights, the basic rights given to individuals on the account of them being human beings, are almost the same everywhere. Every country grants these rights irrespective of an individual’s caste, creed, colour, gender, culture and economic or social status. However, at times these are violated by individuals, groups or the state itself. So, people need to stay on their guard against any violation of human rights.

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Essay on Fundamental Rights for Students and Children

500+ words essay on fundamental rights.

There are some basic rights that are very well-known as fundamental to human existence and crucial for human expansion. In the absence of fundamental rights, a man’s existence would be worthless. So, the political institution’s role and responsibility mainly emphasized on empowering the people, especially the minorities to live in dignity with rights of equality, dignity and religious freedom. Fundamental Rights have been classified into 6 categories that are Right to Equality, Right to Freedom, Right against Exploitation, Right to Freedom of Religion, Right to Cultural and Educational, Right to Constitutional Remedy.

Right to Equality

This right includes the equality before the Law which implies a prohibition of discrimination on the basis of caste, creed, color or sex, equal protection of the law, equal opportunity in public employment and abolition of untouchability and titles. It also states that every citizen shall have equal access to all public places.

To provide equal opportunities there will be no reservation in government services except in the case of scheduled caste, scheduled tribes, and other backward classes and for war widows and physically handicapped person. This right was made to abolish untouchability which was practiced in India for decades.

Right to Freedom

This right includes the right to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom to form unions and associations. It also includes freedom to travel anywhere in India, freedom to live in any part of India, and the freedom to choose any profession of their interest.

This right also states that any citizen of India has the full right to purchase, sell and hold property in any part of the country. According to these rights, people will have the liberty to indulge in any trade or business. This right also defines that a person cannot be convicted twice for the same offense and it also cannot be compelled to stand as a witness against oneself.

Right against Exploitation

This right includes the prohibition of any form of forced labor. Children who are below the age of 14 years are not allowed to work in mines or factories where the risk of life is involved. According to these rights, no person has the right to exploit the other person in any way.

Therefore human trafficking & begging have been made legal offenses and those found involved are to be penalized. According to this rights slavery and traffic among women and children for dishonest purposes has been declared an offense. Payment of minimum wage against the labor is defined and no compromise is allowed in this regard.

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Right to Freedom of Religion

These right states that there will be full freedom of conscience for all citizens of India. All people shall have equal right to freely adopt, practice and spread the religion of their choice. The state shall not hinder in any religious affairs of any individual in any manner. In this, all religions have a right to establish and uphold institutions for religious and charitable purposes. Also, they will be free to manage their own affairs with respect to these rights.

Cultural and Educational Right

This right is one of the most important rights as education is the primary right of each child. According to this right, all are free to follow the culture of their choice. Also, all are free to get the education of their choice.

No individual will be denied admission in any of the educational institutes on the basis of their culture, caste or religion. According to this, all the minorities have the right to establish their own educational institutes.

Right to Constitutional Remedy

This right is a very special right given to all the citizens. According to this right, a citizen has the power to go to the court in case of denial of any of the fundamental rights. The court stands as a guard for anybody against the breach of these rights.

If the government forcefully or intentionally does injustice to any individual or if a person is imprisoned without any reason or by the unlawful act then this right allows the person to go to the court for getting justice against the actions of the government.

Fundamental rights play a very significant role in the life of any citizen. These rights can defend during the time of complexity & difficulty and help us grow into a good human being and that’s why all the rights are the needs of people.

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Book: ks4 citizenship - making human rights real.

Fifteen lesson plans that can be adapted for national curriculum subjects across the UK and for Post-16 Education. Produced in 2009 by Amnesty International in association with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. This resource covers:

• Human rights law, history, values
• Human rights concepts - e.g. balancing conflicting rights
• The proposed Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland
• The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
• An overview of how to use a human rights approach to teaching other citizenship issue (diversity, democracy, equality, social justice)
• Teaching controversial issues and taking action for human rights

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As ever, our mission to protect human rights remains. Please donate today to help expose war crimes and protect human rights. Thank you.

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• Speech on Human Rights

Human Rights Speech

Human Rights are the most basic rights which are bestowed on each and every individual. These human rights take up their action rights from the birth of these individuals till their death do them apart with their own rights. Every other human on this planet, irrespective of their caste, religion, creed, gender, nationality, social status or color are entitled to these rights. While their rights are being protected by respective country laws.

To demonstrate the rights and the freedoms of these human beings, a historical document known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), was set up in the year of 1948. This was indeed the first international agreement on the basic principles of human rights.

Long Speech on Human Rights

Greetings and salutations to all the students and the respected teachers and staff members present,

Today the speech I am about to deliver is about the basic human rights that we deserve. At times, our rights are defined as mere privileges, but I would agree with this notion that our rights are described as to be something more than basic privileges. In simpler words, the entitlement of the fundamental rights which are conferred on every individual is called human rights.

We are born with these rights that are present until our death. All the humans surviving on this planet are entitled to these rights. These rights prove to be effective for each and all, irrespective of the fact of who they are or where they come from or how they choose to live. The reason why these rights are formed is to protect anyone who wants to harm or to violate someone. These human rights give people the freedom to live and to express themselves as to how they want to. Everyone deserves to be themselves and this is supported by human rights.

After the enormous loss of life, caused during World War II, the United Nations signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in the year 1948 on the 10th of December, this was initiated to propose a common understanding for everyone’s rights. Even in the present times, the world is always being sculpted based on freedom, justice and peace which are the rights themselves.

Hence, the 10th of December is celebrated as International Human Rights Day which marks the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Human Rights Include – 

Right to life and liberty

Protection from torture

Fair trials 

Freedom of expression, religion, peaceful assembly

Human Rights are inclusive of many other rights, as we deepen our thoughts the circle will get bigger. Economic, social and cultural rights cover rights which are namely the right to education, housing and health facilities. All these available resources are required to be utilized by the government to achieve them. Treaties are formed to protect the rights of women, children, refugees, the LGBTQ+ society, minorities, the disabled and domestic workers.

All the various principles, declarations and guidelines have been adopted by the United Nations with these treaties to enhance the meaning of these few rights. The UN Human Rights Committee and the UN special rapporteurs are the international institutions that are responsible for interpreting these human rights treaties and monitoring the compliance.

This is the duty of the government who themselves implement international human rights. This is the duty of the government to protect and promote human rights by barring these violations by the officials or stand, also punishing offenders. Also, while creating ways for the citizen to seek help to breach their rights. This is itself a human right violation if a country fails to initiate any step against the private individuals who abuse domestic violence.

Human Rights are Classified as 

Natural rights

Legal rights

Social welfare rights

Ethnic rights

Positive and negative rights

Individual rights

Claim and liberty rights

2 Minutes Speech on Human Rights

Good morning to everyone,

The term human rights are defined as the right to live, liberty, equality and deliver respect for any human being. Our Constitution has a section that follows the Rights and the Fundamental Rights, that provides the people of the nation with their own fundamental rights.

The fundamental rights are the basic human rights of every single citizen of the country, irrespective of their caste, background, their religion, colour, status or their sex. Between the years 1957 to 1949, the sections were very vital elements that were added to the Constitution.

In India, there are six fundamental or human rights that are Right to Freedom, Right to equality, Right against exploitation, Right to Freedom of Religion, Culture and educational rights and Right to seek Constitutional Remedies.

Internationally on the violation of the international human rights or violation of the humanitarian laws or crimes against us, the humanity, the government of a country prosecute the individual, or this can be done by another country as well under the “universal jurisdiction”.

10 Lines on Human Rights Speech in English

There are almost 40 million children who suffer from abuse who should be covered with human rights.

Worldwide, more than 3,00,000 children under the age of 18 are also being exploited, this calls for human rights.

There are around 246 million child laborers worldwide, which is a violation of human rights.

Throughout our history, women have been restricted from exercising their own rights.

Access to the internet was declared one of the basic human rights by the UN in 2011.

Twenty-one million people all over the world were the victims of forced labor.

Leisure and holiday guaranteed with pay is a right for everyone.

In four countries death penalties have been abolished by the year 2015.

In the country of South Africa, a celebration of Human Rights Day takes place on 21st March to pay respect to the Sharpeville massacre.

Domestic violence in many countries is still not considered a crime.

Human Rights are such rights that we deserve to get right from our birth. Many people are not quite aware of their basic rights, in that situation awareness of the same is required so that the people can live an unbiased life.

FAQs on Speech on Human Rights

1. Explain the following rights in brief 

(i)  Right to practice our religion

(ii) Right to speak our language

(i) Right to practice our religion means every human being has the independence to live their religion without any restrictions. This is considered as a fundamental right. The article 25-28 of the Indian constitution guarantees this right. Acc. to this right, all religions are treated equally and the citizens of the country are given equal rights to practice their religion. One of the popular Act related to practicing a particular religion is the 'freedom of religion Act' passed in 1968 in the state of madhya pradesh. This act was passed under the governance of congress. This act also promotem converting yourself from one religion to another. This act had terms and conditions which made sure about the security of the individual. One of the important terms related to this act says that 'no individual must be forced to convert from one religion to another' and must have the freedom to live his culture in our society. 

(ii) The right to speak our language is one of the most important rights in the constitution. Linguistic rights are considered as human and civil rights. This right provides the freedom to choose the language the citizen wants to speak. When linguistic rights are combined with human rights, it makes up linguistic human rights. These linguistic human rights include the right to learn different languages including foreign languages. All of the linguistic human rights are language rights but the vice versa is not true. There are some articles that provide linguistic rights are 

Article 10 

2. What are the advantages of giving human rights to the citizens?

  Providing citizens with Human rights helps in the following ways :

Human rights oppose discrimination and helps in spreading equality among the citizen of the country.

Human rights contribute to making the constitution fair.

It helps in proper classification of the group of people on the basis of different languages, places, sex etc. But, human rights provide independence to practice language, religion etc. 

It also helps to enhance the diversity of the country.

The main aim of providing human rights is to empower the citizens to do their desired work. 

It helps in the overall development of the country. Human rights encourage modernisation and growth.

3. Explain the 'right to education' and its merits.

The right to education is a human right that empowers the citizen to gain education without being stopped by anyone. The right to education act was passed by the parliament on 4 August 2009. It encourages educating children on a mass level. It provides the right to free and compulsory education for all. This right is responsible for increasing the literacy rate of India. Also, it makes the citizens aware about their rights. As it promotes literacy, it also contributes in modernisation and growth of the country.

4. Which part of the system cares about human rights?

In India, human rights were established by NHRC National Human Rights Commission). Since then, the government has the responsibility to ensure the proper implementation of various human rights. Government divided this function into different branches of the constitution. The judiciary holds the constitutional responsibility to protect human rights in India. It protects and studies the situations related to human rights. Along with this, it decides the distribution of human rights. For example - every citizen gets equal human rights. But, distribution of human rights on the basis of needs is done by the judiciary. The parliament has the power to approve or pass the bills related to human rights. Further, the Supreme Court and High Courts hold the power to take action and look after the proper distribution and implementation of human rights. Therefore, the department of human rights is managed by the government and not any private organization.

5. What are the drawbacks of human rights?

 Following are points the drawbacks related of human rights :

In underdeveloped countries or remote areas, many people are still unaware about their rights. This proves that distribution of human rights is not 100% possible in the present scenario.

Human rights acts and organizations need a huge amount of monetary funds.

Corruption leads to lack of human rights. This also disturbes the proper working of the system.

Human rights are still not able to uplift the position of females in society. As a result of this, most of the higher posts are occupied by men and this gives rise to inequality. 

Sometimes, human rights do not prove to be helpful for all the citizens at the same time. 

Human rights acts take a long time to get passed and approved by the parliament. This makes implementation of new human rights difficult.

Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens Essay

India is a democratic country where its citizens live freely however they have lots of rights and responsibilities towards their country. Rights and responsibilities are two sides of a coin and both go side to side. If we have rights we must have their corresponding responsibilities too. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand with us where we live in whatever home, society, village, state, or country. Now-a-days, students gets assigned by their teachers to write some paragraphs or complete essay on any topic to enhance their English writing skill and knowledge as well as spread awareness. Following are some paragraphs, short essays and long essays on Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens to help students in completing their related task. All the Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens essay are written very simply. So, you can select any essay according to your need and requirement:

Long and Short Essay on Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens in English

Rights and responsibilities of citizens essay 1 (100 words).

Citizen is the person who lives as an inhabitant in any village or city of the state and country. We all are citizen of our country and have various rights and responsibilities towards our village, city, society, state and country. Rights and duties of each citizen are very valuable and inter-related. Every state or country provides its citizens some fundamental civil rights such as personal rights, religious rights, social rights, moral rights, economic rights and political rights. As a citizen of the country we are morally and legally required to complete our duties always together. We should love and respect each other and live together without any difference. We are expected to sacrifice time to time in order to protect our country.

Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens Essay 2 (150 words)

Citizens living in the country must know their rights and responsibilities. Understanding all the rules and regulation presented by the government may help every citizen in completing their responsibilities towards country. We must understand our rights for our own well being and freedom in the country as well as serve for the communities and country. The constitution of India (called as supreme law of India) came into force in 1950 on 26 January which has given democratic rights to the Indian citizen. According to the Indian constitution, people of India have various rights and responsibilities.

There are around six fundamental rights of the Indian citizens without which no one can live in the democratic manner. Means, democracy in the country can work only if its citizens have rights. Such rights prevent the government from being dictatorial and cruel. Fundamental rights help people in their moral, material and personality development. In case of rights violations of someone, courts can protect and safeguard them. There are some fundamental responsibilities too for the peace and prosperity of the country.

Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens Essay 3 (200 words)

Fundamental rights of the Indian citizens are given to them for the basic and essential conditions of good life for their progress. Without such rights no Indian citizen can develop his/her personality and confidence. These fundamental rights are preserved in the Indian Constitution. Fundamental rights are protected and guaranteed to the citizens by supreme law while ordinary rights by the ordinary law. Fundamental rights of the citizens are not violable in ordinary situation however in some reasonable circumstances they can be suspended but temporarily.

Six fundamental rights according to the Indian constitution are Right to Equality (Article 14 – Article 18), Right to Religion (Articles 25 – Article 28), Right against Exploitation (Articles 23 – Article 24), Right to Culture and Education (Articles 29 – Article 30), Right to Freedom (Articles 19 – Article 22), and Right to Constitutional Remedies (Article 32). Citizens enjoy their fundamental rights living anywhere in the country. He/she can go to the court for legal assistance in case his/her rights are violated by force. There are various responsibilities too of the good citizens which everyone must follow in order to improve surroundings and get inner peace. Fulfilling responsibilities towards country gives sense of ownership for the country. Being a good citizen of the country, we should not waste electricity, water, natural resources, public property, etc. We should follow all the rules and laws as well as pay tax timely.

Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens Essay 4 (250 words)

Fundamental rights given to the Indian citizens are essential part of the Constitution. Such fundamental rights can be altered by the Parliament using special procedure. No person other than Indian citizen is allowed to enjoy such rights except right to liberty, life, and personal property. Other fundamental rights except right to life and personal liberty can be suspended during time of emergency. If any citizen found his/her rights violated can go to the court (Supreme Court and High Court) for enforcement. Some fundamental rights are positive or negative in nature and always become superior to the ordinary laws. Some fundamental rights like freedom of speech, assembly, cultural right and educational rights are limited to citizens only.

There were no fundamental duties preserved in the Constitution of India when it came into force in 1950. However, ten fundamental duties (covered by Article 51 A) were added in the 42 nd Amendment of the Constitution of India in 1976. Following are the fundamental responsibilities of the Indian citizens:

• Indian citizen must respect their National Flag and the National Anthem.
• They must respect, value and follow all the noble ideals used in the national struggle for freedom.
• They must to protect the power, unity and integrity of the country.
• They guard the country and maintain the spirit of common brotherhood.
• They must protect and preserve the cultural heritage sites.
• They must protect, preserve and improve the natural environment.
• They must safeguard the public property.
• They should develop scientific temper and spirit of inquiry.
• They must work hard to get excellence in every area of individual and collective activity.

Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens Essay 5 (300 words)

Fundamental duties of the Indian citizens are mentioned in the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution of India in 1976. All the responsibilities are very important and necessary for the vital interest of country. They can be civic duties or moral duties which cannot be enforced legally upon the citizens even by the courts. One cannot be punished if he/she is not performing his/her duties as there is no legal force governing these duties. Fundamental duties (right to equality, right to freedom, right against exploitation, right to freedom of religion, cultural and educational rights and right to constitutional remedies) are the integral part of Constitution of India having moral impact and educative value upon the Indian citizens. Inclusion of such responsibilities to the Constitution is important for the progress, peace and prosperity of the country.

Some of the fundamental responsibilities mentioned in the Constitution of India are like respect to the National Flag, the National Anthem, citizens must defend their country, commit to provide National service whenever required, safeguard the public property, etc. Such rights and responsibilities are very important for National interest of the country however not forcefully enforced to the people. In order to completely enjoy the rights, people must perform their responsibilities towards country in a well manner as rights and responsibilities are related to each other. As we get rights our responsibilities increases too towards individual and social welfare. Both are not separable and vital regarding prosperity of country.

As a good citizen of the country, we need to know and learn our all the rights and duties for the welfare of our society and country. We need to understand that all of us are responsible for good or bad condition of the society. We need to change our thinking into action to bring some positive effect in our society and country. If the individual action performed by a person can change the life; why not, our collaborative actions have positive effects over the society and country. So, the duties of citizens matters a lot for the prosperity and peace of society and entire country.

Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens Essay 6 (400 words)

As we are a social animal, we have lots of responsibilities for the development as well as bring prosperity and peace in the society and country. In order to fulfill our responsibilities we have given some rights by the Constitution of India. Rights are very necessary given to the citizens for their individual development and improve the social life. Democratic system of the country is completely based on the freedom of its citizens to enjoy their rights. Rights given by our Constitution are called as Fundamental Rights which cannot be taken back from us in normal times. Our Constitution gives us six rights such as:

• Right to Freedom: It is very important fundamental right which makes people able to express their thoughts and ideas through speech, writing or other means. According to this right, a person is free to cherish, criticize or speak against the governmental policies. He/she is free to carry on any business in any corner of the country.
• Right to Freedom of Religion: There are many states in the country where people of various religions live together. Each one of us is free to practice, propagate and follow any religion we like. No one has right to interfere with the faith of anybody.
• Right to Equality: Citizens living in India are equal and have no any difference and discrimination between rich and poor or high and low. A person of any religion, caste, creed, sex or place can get the highest position in office for which he/she has ability and required qualifications
• Right to Education and Culture: Every child has right to education and he/she can get education in any institution up to any level.
• Right against Exploitation: No one has right to force anybody to work without wages or against his/her wish or children below 14 years of age.
• Right to Constitutional Remedies: It is the most important one which protects all the fundamental rights. If someone feels that his/her rights are being harmed in any condition he/she can approach to the court seeking justice.

As we know that both, duties and rights go side by side. Our rights are meaningless without duties thus both are inseparable. We do not have right to get benefited with rights if we do not follow our duties properly for the smooth running of country. As being the citizen of the country, our responsibilities and duties are:

• We must respect the National Flag and National Anthem.
• We should respect and obey the laws of our country.
• We should enjoy rights and freedom under the limit without interfering with freedom and rights of others.
• We should be ready to protect our country whenever required.
• We should respect and protect national property and public property (such as railways, post-offices, bridges, roadways, schools, colleges, historical buildings, places, forests, etc).
• We should pay our taxes with honesty in timely manner.

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COMPASS Manual for Human Rights Education with Young people

Questions and answers about human rights.

Question: What are human rights?

Human rights are moral entitlements that every individual in the world possesses simply in virtue of the fact that he or she is a human being. In claiming our human rights, we are making a moral claim, normally on our own government, that you cannot do that, because it is a violation of my moral sphere and my personal dignity. No-one – no individual, no government – can ever take away our human rights.

Question: Where do they come from?

They come from the fact that we are not only physical beings, but also moral and spiritual human beings. Human rights are needed to protect and preserve every individual's humanity, to ensure that every individual can live a life of dignity and a life that is worthy of a human being.

Question: Why "should" anyone respect them?

Fundamentally, because everyone is a human being and therefore a moral being. The majority of individuals, if shown that they are violating someone else's personal dignity, will try to refrain. In general, people do not want to hurt other people. However, in addition to the moral sanctions of one's own conscience or that of others, there is now legislation in most countries of the world which obliges governments to respect the basic human rights of citizens, even when they may be unwilling to do so.

Question:  Who has human rights?

Absolutely everyone. Criminals, heads of state, children, men, women, Africans, Americans, Europeans, refugees, stateless persons, the unemployed, those in employment, bankers, those accused of carrying out acts of terrorism, charity workers, teachers, dancers, astronauts ...

Question: Even criminals and heads of state?

Absolutely everyone. Criminals and heads of state are humans too. The power of human rights lies in the very fact that they treat everyone as equal in terms of possessing human dignity. Some people may have violated the rights of others or may pose a threat to society and may therefore need to have their rights limited in some way in order to protect others, but only within certain limits. These limits are defined as being the minimum which is necessary for a life of human dignity.

Question: Why do some groups require special human rights? Does this mean that they have more rights than others?

No, some groups, such as the Roma in Europe or Dalits and scheduled castes in India, have suffered such long-term discrimination in our societies that they need special measures to enable them to access general human rights standards on an equal basis with others. Years of institutionalised discrimination and stereotypes, and outright hatred and obstacles, mean that just announcing generally applicable rights to them, and expecting that this is enough to ensure equality, would be farcical.

Question: Why do we talk about human rights and not human responsibilities?

Although some thinkers and NGOs have put forward strong arguments for the need for human responsibilities and even codes or declaration to articulate these, the human rights community has generally been reticent about this debate. The reason is that many governments make the "granting" of human rights dependent on certain "duties" imposed by the state or ruler, in this way making the whole idea of rights as birthrights meaningless. However, it goes without saying that we need to act responsibly as individuals and groups to respect the rights of others, not to abuse human rights and to advance the rights of others as well as ourselves. In fact, article 29 of the UDHR recognises that, "1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. 2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.".

Question: Who looks after human rights?

We all need to. There is legislation both at national and at international levels which imposes restrictions on what governments are able to do to their citizens but, if no-one points out that their actions are violating international norms, governments can continue to violate them with impunity. As individuals, we need not only to respect the rights of others in our everyday lives but also to keep watch on our governments and on others. The protective systems are there for all of us if we use them.

Question: How can I defend my rights?

Try pointing out that they have been violated; claim your rights. Let the other person know that you know they are not entitled to treat you in this way.. Pinpoint the relevant articles in the UDHR, in the ECHR or the other international documents. If there is legislation in your own country, point to that as well. Tell others about it: tell the press, write to your parliamentary representative and head of state, inform any NGOs that are engaged in human rights activism. Ask their advice. Speak to a lawyer, if you have the opportunity. Make sure that your government knows what action you are taking. Make them realise that you are not going to give up. Show them the support you can draw on. In the final analysis, and if everything else has failed, you may want to resort to the courts.

Question: How do I go to the European Court of Human Rights?

The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms contains a procedure for individual complaints. However, there are strong admissibility requirements before a case can be considered. For example, you need to ensure that your complaint has already been raised in the national courts of your country (up to the highest court!) before you can bring a case to the European Court. If you wish to try, and you believe that you satisfy the admissibility requirements, then you can bring a complaint. However, you are strongly advised to seek legal advice or the advice of NGOs working in the field in order to be sure that your claim has a real chance of success. Be aware that it can be a long and complicated process before a final judgment is given!

Question: From whom can I claim my rights?

Nearly all the basic human rights that are listed in the international documents are claims against your government, or state officials. Human rights protect your interests against the state, so you need to claim them from the state or from their representatives. If you feel that your rights are being violated by, for example, your employer or your neighbour, you cannot resort directly to international human rights legislation unless there is also something the government of the country ought to have done to prevent employers or neighbours from behaving in this way.

Question: Does anyone have a duty to protect my rights?

Yes. A right is meaningless without a corresponding responsibility or duty on someone else's part. Every individual has a moral duty not to violate your personal dignity but your government, in signing up to international agreements, has not just a moral duty but also a legal duty.

Question: Are human rights only a problem in non-democratic countries?

There is no country in the world that has a completely clean record on human rights, even today. There may be more frequent violations in some countries than others or they may affect a larger proportion of the population, but every single violation is a problem that ought not to have happened and that needs to be dealt with. An individual whose rights are violated in one of the established democracies is hardly likely to be comforted by the fact that, in general, their country has a "better" record on human rights than other countries in the world!

Question: Have we made any progress in reducing human rights violations?

Great progress – even if it sometimes seems a mere drop in the ocean. Consider the abolition of slavery, the vote for women, the countries that have abolished the death penalty, the freeing of prisoners of conscience as a result of international pressure, the collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the cases that have been tried before the European Court and the laws that have had to be changed as a result. Consider the fact that the gradual change in international culture means that even the most authoritarian regimes now have to take human rights into consideration in order to be accepted on the international stage. There have been many positive results, particularly over the past 50 years, but a great deal more remains to be done.

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• Chapter 1 - Human Rights Education and Compass: an introduction
• Chapter 2 -  Practical Activities and Methods for Human Rights Education
• Chapter 3 - Taking Action for Human Rights
• Chapter 4 - Understanding Human Rights
• Chapter 5 - Background Information on Global Human Rights Themes

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Chapter 2 Citizenship and Nationality

Terms, concepts and rights.

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Nationality is a legal bond having as its basis a social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties. 1 icj , Nottebohm (Liechtenstein v Guatemala), 1955

In the landmark case of Nottebohm, the International Court of Justice famously defined nationality as a legal bond between a person and a state “having as its basis a social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties”. 2 This quotation is often the starting point for studies on nationality in international law. It defines the term ‘nationality’ and implies a certain underlying concept of nationality as a legal status. The present chapter will begin with an outline of the usage of the notions of ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ in this study ( i .), before discussing the concept of nationality and its legal nature ( ii .). A third section will then briefly trace the theoretical debates qualifying citizenship as a (moral) human right in order to set the ground for the discussion of citizenship as a legal human right ( iii .).

i Citizenship or Nationality? A Note on Terminology

So far the terms ‘citizenship’ and ‘nationality’ have both been used — and mostly as interchangeable notions, as is often done in international legal studies on nationality and citizenship. 3 However, the two terms cannot just be treated as synonyms — depending on the discipline, legal tradition and language, the two terms represent different concepts. 4 Hence, the question of how the terms are to be used in this study deserves some discussion.

the status of being a citizen or subject of a particular state; the legal relationship between a citizen and his or her state, usually involving obligations of support and protection; a particular national identity; [and] a group of persons belonging to a particular nation; a nation; an ethnic or racial group. 5

The term ‘citizenship’, by contrast, is defined as “the position or status of being a citizen” and an “engagement in the duties and responsibilities of a member of society”. 6 Moreover, the Dictionnary notes that “[a]s a legal status synonymous with nationality, citizenship typically confers the rights to live and work in a particular nation state and to participate in its politics while being subject to taxation”. 7

Thus, while they can be used synonymously, the terms ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’ can also have different meanings and represent significantly different concepts. 8 Paul Weis distinguishes nationality in a politico-legal sense from nationality as a historico-biological term. 9 The former denotes membership in a state whereas the latter refers to

the subjective corporate sentiment of unity of members of a specific group forming a ‘race’ or ‘nation’ which may, though not necessarily, be possessed of a territory and which, by seeking political unity on that territory, may lead to the formation of a state. 10

Further complexity is added through the fact that in the English legal tradition, the notions of ‘citizenship’ and ‘nationality’ can also refer to different categories of citizens regarding the possession of political rights. 11

Similar variations can be observed in other European languages. In French and Spanish ‘ nationalité’ and ‘ nacionalidad’ are used to refer to the external formal legal bond between an individual and a state. ‘ Citoyenneté’ and ‘ ciudadanía’ , on the other hand, refer to political membership within the state. 12 In German, the Anglo-Saxon notion of ‘citizenship’ and the French ‘ citoyenneté ’ have no direct counterpart. 13 The main term is ‘ Staatsangehörigkeit ’ which represents the legal link of nationality, whereas the term ‘ Staatsbürgerschaft ’ is used more in social sciences than in law to refer to the political or participatory dimension of membership. 14 The term ‘ Nationalität ’ is rarely used.

In legal debates, the term ‘nationality’ was traditionally used to refer to the international aspect of belonging to a state, linking an individual to a particular state as opposed to others, whereas ‘citizenship’ was understood as referring to the internal, national and municipal aspect of membership to a state, including the rights and duties of the individual in relation to that state. 15 Both terms, therefore, denote the legal status of an individual as a member of a nation state, but reflect two different legal frameworks, ie the international legal framework and the domestic legal framework respectively. 16 In non-legal debates, the two notions are rarely used synonymously. 17 In fact, the conflation of citizenship with nationality is often seen as problematic in social sciences. 18 The term nationality, on the one hand, has a strong ethnical, or even nationalistic connotation and is thus rarely used to describe membership in a state. Citizenship, on the other hand, is used to refer to broader forms or notions of membership, belonging, equality and participation in society, beyond the mere legal status. 19 Hence, the term citizenship has a normative dimension of opening up social membership. 20

International law mainly uses the term ‘nationality’ and domestic law ‘citizenship’. 21 Accordingly, most international legal instruments from the 1930 Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, 22 the udhr , the UN human rights treaties, the American Convention on Human Rights ( achr ), 23 the Arab Charter on Human Rights (ArCHR), 24 the European Convention on Nationality ( ecn ) 25 to the African Union Draft Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Specific Aspects of the Right to a Nationality and the Eradication of Statelessness in Africa 26 use the term ‘nationality’. In soft law instruments the term ‘nationality’ also prevails. 27 International courts and treaty bodies seem to use both ‘nationality’ and ‘citizenship’. The Permanent Court of International Justice ( pcij ), the icj and the IACtHR only use nationality, 28 whereas UN treaty bodies, the African Commission and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights use both terms, sometimes even within the same ruling. 29 Interesting is the example of the ECtHR which refers to ‘citizenship’ just as much as to ‘nationality’. 30 The case law of the ECtHR — which nota bene is not bound by the terminology of its legal framework as the European Convention on Human Rights ( echr ) 31 and its protocols do not enshrine a right to nationality or citizenship — is exemplary for the tendency to use the terms interchangeably. Finally, the term ‘citizenship’ figures prominently in EU law. However, here the term ‘citizenship’ is used to refer to Union citizenship, a legal status sui generis different from and in addition to nationality of a member state. Regarding membership at the national level in the member states, EU law uses primarily the term ‘nationality’ with some exceptions. 32

For the purposes of this study, the terms nationality and citizenship will both be used to refer to full membership to a state in the legal sense of a bond between an individual and a state. In principle, the two terms will be used interchangeably. However, the term ‘nationality’ is mainly used to quote or refer to sources of international law using this terminology. Thus, where Chapter 4 discusses the sources covering the ‘right to nationality’, the term ‘nationality’ is used to correctly reflect the wording of the sources. Where, however, the sources themselves use the term ‘citizenship’ or where the discussion goes beyond the current positive legal framework, preference will be given to the notion of ‘citizenship’. As Peter Spiro already proposed, the reconceptualization of citizenship shall be accompanied by a “shift away from the use of the term ‘nationality’ to denote the formal tie between the individual and the state, and toward the now more appropriate use of ‘citizenship’”. 33 Similarly, Ernst Hirsch Ballin gives preference to the term ‘citizenship’, which does not evoke associations of state sovereignty at nation state level but instead “expresses the fact that it is the legal status of a citizen of a polity”. 34 In Chapter 6 the discussion will thus shift from the ‘right to nationality’ to the ‘right to citizenship’ in order to reflect a contemporary, more inclusive and rights-based understanding of equal membership in democratic states. 35

ii The Concept of Citizenship

The discussion about terminology shows that the concepts of citizenship and nationality are anything but straightforward. Depending on one’s perspective, the understandings of citizenship and its legal qualification and political significance vary. The following section will discuss how the concepts of citizenship and nationality evolved historically ( ii .1), how the concepts can be theorized ( ii .2) and what citizenship means as a legal status ( ii .3).

1 Historical Traces of the Concept of Citizenship

Alexander Makarov wrote in 1947 that the concept of citizenship is as old as the concept of the state. 36 Historically, the origins of the concept of citizenship are nevertheless often traced back to classic antiquity. 37 In the Greek city states, citizens had a privileged right to participate in the governing of the city. 38 Citizens came together in the polis to discuss matters of public life. Citizens were those who were entitled to “participate actively in the collective life and in the construction of the community”. 39 It reflects the Aristotelian conception of a citizen as someone who is both ruler and ruled. 40 Citizenship, as J.G.A. Pocock writes, was thereby “not just a means to being free; it is the way of being free itself”. 41 While those with citizen rights ruled collectively among equals, the Greek concept of citizenship was highly exclusionary. Only free adult males who received their citizenship based on descent were recognized as citizens. Women, children, slaves, foreigners, metics and other minority groups remained excluded from collective self-rule. 42

In the Roman Empire, the concept of citizenship was expanded beyond city states to governed territories. 43 Moreover, its functions were extended. The Roman civitas shifted the focus from citizenship as the right to participate in political decisions, to citizenship as a legal status. 44 Under this system, the individual was a citizen not primarily by virtue of participation in political life, but due to social status, property and the legal system. 45 According to Pocock, a citizen meant “someone free to act by law, free to ask and expect the law’s protection, a citizen of such and such a legal community, of such and such a legal standing in that community”. 46 Just as in the Greek system, Roman citizenship excluded along the lines of birth, class, race and gender. 47 While citizenship was awarded to privileged, property-owning men on the basis of jus sanguinis , women, slaves and non-Romans were excluded and thereby denied legal status.

Both the Greek and Roman concept of citizenship provide a basis for a contemporary discussion of citizenship. While the Greek model of citizenship was concerned with the equality of citizens as rulers or makers of the law, the Roman model of citizenship focused on the status and the equality of citizens under the law. 48 Thus, citizenship evolved from mere political rights to membership in a legal community. 49 As Linda Bosniak notes, we can derive from the Roman model that citizenship is a matter of formal, juridical membership in an organized political community as well as a precondition and entitlement to the enjoyment of rights. The Greek — or Aristotelian — conception shaped the idea of citizenship as political participation. 50 Until today, the Roman model was associated with a liberal idea of citizenship, while the Greek model was said to reflect republican forms of citizenship. 51 However, one should be careful to transpose the ideas of these historical models to contemporary normative accounts of inclusive and equal citizenship. 52

In the feudal societies of the European Middle Ages citizenship lost much of its political meaning and was replaced by notions of allegiance to the king or local ruler and religious affiliation. 53 Everyone within the territory of the king’s land was his subject and owed allegiance — ie loyalty and fealty. Forms of citizenship only appeared at the local level in towns and cities. In the High and Late Middle Ages such cities gained importance as (partly) independent, self-governing political units. 54 The inhabitants of these cities were granted certain privileges and obligations. Citizenship was acquired on the basis of descent, but it was also accessible through naturalization for new inhabitants on the basis of residence. 55 Oftentimes citizenship was connected to membership in a professional guild and linked to the right to exercise a profession and to conduct trade. 56

Membership of the political community thus became conditioned on membership of a sovereign nation. Citizens were deemed to possess certain national characteristics, be they a common origin, a common culture, religion, language and so on, which distinguished them from ‘foreigners’. Accordingly, the boundaries of the state became congruent with the boundaries of the nation and the principle of spatial exclusion replaced the pre-modern principle of subjection to a sovereign ruler as the premise of citizenship law. 60

Thereby, citizenship became increasingly intertwined with ideas of the state — and even more so the ‘nation’ — being an ethnically, culturally and linguistically homogenous entity. 61 This further strengthened the exclusionary force of citizenship. Closely related to an ethnic, exclusionary understanding of citizenship was the increasing weight of the call for the right to control the entry and stay of persons on national territory as an expression of state sovereignty in the early 20th century. 62 At the same time European colonialism and the processes of de-colonization in the 20th century contributed to the establishment of nation states as the central political entities while it perpetuated exclusionary and racialized regimes of citizenship. 63 Hence, even though citizen, as Linda Kerber argues, “is an equalizing word”, the history of citizenship shows the tendency to use membership and rights as markers of difference and exclusion. 64

2 Theoretical Conceptualizations of Citizenship

manifold dimensions of citizenship: as a legal status and political membership; as rights and obligations; as identity and belonging; as civic virtues and practices of engagement; as a discourse of political and social equality or responsibility for a common good. 67

To borrow from Audrey Macklin: “if citizenship were a home appliance, it would be the only one you would ever need”. 68 Nevertheless, many citizenship scholars have tried to identify the main dimensions of citizenship: citizenship as a (legal) status, citizenship as rights, citizenship as identity or belonging and citizenship as political activity. 69 These dimensions can be distinguished theoretically, but in practice often overlap and are mutually dependent. 70 This answers the question what citizenship is. Following Bosniak , a definition of the concept of citizenship also calls for an answer to the question of where citizenship takes place and — crucial in the context of this thesis — who falls within the category of citizenship. 71

Territorially, citizenship is at least in the legal discipline usually understood to apply in relation to the (nation) state. This is, however, not necessarily the case. 72 There are also accounts of citizenship that go beyond the traditional focus on the state and look at citizenship at the local, regional, global or supranational level, as well as conceptualizations of citizenship fully detached from territory. 73 Citizenship has also been conceptualized as extending beyond the political sphere to include the social and private domains — if the latter two are not already understood as political. 74 This being said, the state remains the most important entity for citizenship understood as legal status and political participation.

The question of who a subject of citizenship is, is usually answered in two ways. Some see citizenship as a universal concept which ultimately should include everyone, whereas others discuss citizenship from its margins and focus on the exclusionary mechanisms it entails. 75 Whether as rights, status, membership or as identity, citizenship as a (political) concept always implies both inclusion of those who belong and exclusion of those who are outside. 76 Rogers Brubaker described citizenship as being internally inclusive and externally exclusive thus allowing for social closure. 77 Others have used the image of the ‘janus-face’ to describe the differentiating function of citizenship. 78 As such a marker of belonging, citizenship today is an important cause for inequality on a global level. 79 Yet, this boundary between those included and those excluded is not binary. Rather, there are degrees of citizenship and gradients of alienage. 80 Moreover, these borders of citizenship between those within and those on the outside are not limited to state borders, they apply everywhere: “at the physical boundary of the national territory — in the political practices and policies — in social norms (gender, sexuality, etc.) — and embodied in individuals (non-citizens and citizens carry the border)”. 81 Hence, citizenship is often linked with the principle of equality. 82 In particular, scholars of immigration and nationality see citizenship as “the core analytical concept for thinking about the way in which the community’s membership and boundaries are constituted in the first instance”. 83 Similarly, in feminist and queer theory, Critical Race Theory or in Critical Disability Studies, the ostensible universality of citizenship and its egalitarian dimension have been questionned. 84 Against this background Kim Rubenstein reminds us that citizenship is “neither gender, class, nor race neutral, but affected by different groups’ positions within nation states”. 85

The discussion of the different concepts of citizenship shows that citizenship, as Kerber posits, “means what we make it mean”. 86 Citizenship is a relative concept and subject to change. 87 It reflects the evolving and transforming ideas and ideals of community, subjective and collective perceptions of identity and political self-determination and the ongoing negotiations of who belongs. 88 Citizenship is also ‘relational’, defined and continuously shaped by one’s social interactions with others. 89 Different forms of citizenship have been said to appear and disappear, the decline of the concept of citizenship altogether has been announced and its revival observed. 90 Current contributions describe a transformation of citizenship to instrumental citizenship, ‘citizenship lite’ or the commodification of citizenship. 91 This relativity of citizenship highlights that the subjects of citizenship — citizens and non-citizens — are constructed. 92 As noted by Bosniak, “citizens and non-citizens are not beings found in nature; they are made and unmade by law and politics”. 93 The same is true for the systems of citizenship attribution. The modes for attributing citizenship at birth on the basis of territory — jus soli — or on the basis of descent — jus sanguinis — are equally politically constructed and enforced by law, and so are the requirements for acquiring nationality later in life through naturalization. 94 This, however, also means that the concept of citizenship can be subject to change. The question, then, is based on which principles law and politics make citizens and citizenship.

For the purpose of this study, I will focus on citizenship in a legal sense — that is citizenship as a legal status, a relationship between an individual and a state that, despite the existence of internationally protected human rights applying to everyone irrespective of one’s citizenship, still secures important rights and may bear certain obligations. The locus and subject of the analysis are the nation state, its citizens and non-citizens. The question is how international human rights law shapes this relationship between the state, citizens and non-citizens in nationality matters and how it impacts access to, and exclusion from, that legal status. The different conceptions of citizenship thereby serve as a challenge to reflect on the concept of citizenship in international human rights law critically.

3 Citizenship as a Legal Status

3.1 the concept of citizenship in international law.

What does it mean that I understand citizenship as a legal status for the purposes of this study? In one of the main treatises on nationality of the 20th century, Makarov defined citizenship as a “Rechtsverhältnis zwischen dem Staat und seinen Angehörigen […], bei dessen Regelung die Eigenschaft der Person als Subjekt dieses Rechtsverhältnisses einen rechtlichen Status dieser Person bildet”. 95 In other words, citizenship is a legal relationship between the state and its members in which the relationship of the individual member to the state is a specific legal status. 96 Thus, citizenship as a legal status is the legal recognition of the relationship between a state and an individual and is itself the formal basis for rights and duties of the individual in the state of nationality. 97 Citizenship in a legal sense is, therefore, “the quintessential legal relationship between individuals and their state”. 98 It determines both the legal criteria for membership and the nature of the connection between the state and its members.

Nationality is a legal bond, having as its basis a social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties. 99

It defines citizenship or nationality as a formal legal bond, a relationship, between an individual and a state. This relationship brings with it certain rights and duties, even though they are not necessarily specified. Moreover, the Nottebohm ruling suggests that the relationship between the individual and the state should be established due to, or based on a certain pre-existing connection or attachment between that individual and the state.

nationality is a juridical expression of a social fact that connects an individual to a State. Nationality is a fundamental human right […]. The importance of nationality is that, as the political and legal bond that connects a person to a specific State, it allows the individual to acquire and exercise rights and obligations inherent in membership in a political community. As such, nationality is a requirement for the exercise of specific rights. 101

The Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union ( cjeu ), Poiares Maduro, found in its opinion in the Rottman case that

[i]t is well known that nationality can be defined as the legal relationship under public law between an individual and a given State, a relationship which gives rise to a body of rights and obligations for that individual. The characteristic feature of that nationality relationship is that it is founded on a special bond of allegiance to the State in question and on reciprocity of rights and duties. With nationality, the State defines its people. What is at stake, through the nationality relationship, is the formation of a national body politic […]. 102

All this suggests that in international law citizenship is to be understood as a legal status — a legal status that allocates individuals to a certain state. From the perspective of international law, the element of allocation of individuals to a particular state is the primary function of nationality. 103 Through the institute of citizenship the state defines its population and forms its body politic. At the domestic level, citizenship grants full membership in the state that comes with a specific bundle of rights. 104 The rights and obligations tied to the status of full membership and the basis for the status — the conditions for acquisition and loss of citizenship — are generally left to be regulated at the national level. 105 Beyond the allocation function, the concept of citizenship from a legal perspective is, as some argue, hollow or empty. 106 In 1929, the Harvard Research in International Law, for example, found that “nationality has no positive, immutable meaning”. 107 Similarly, Rainer Bauböck recently noted that citizenship does “not entail any particular content either in terms of rights or political participation”. 108 In that sense, citizenship as a legal status is a dual concept governed, at the same time, by rules of both domestic and international law and has effects at the domestic and the international levels. 109 International citizenship law, then, is the body of rules found in international legal texts that govern the acquisition and the loss of nationality or rather, that set the limits of state’ discretion when regulating acquisition or loss of citizenship. 110

As will be shown in more detail below, citizenship, moreover, is an essential element of statehood from an international legal perspective. 111 States are essentially communities of individual human beings that collectively govern a particular territory and the persons on that territory. They do not exist without a population, a body politic or a citizenry. At the same time, citizenship in a legal sense equally presupposes the existence of a state. 112 As such, citizenship is therefore directly linked to the concept of the state and its sovereignty. 113

Through this link between membership, identity, rights and obligations and statehood, citizenship impacts society as a whole. As Tendayi Bloom notes, “it is impossible to create a liberal State in a world of States without also creating citizenship”. 114 The definition of the collective identity of a state through its population, and with it the criteria for membership in that collective, however, are highly political questions. Foreigners and newcomers to the community of citizens are often perceived (or instrumentalized) as a possible threat to antecedent ideas of identity. Sandra Mantu describes nationality attribution and loss in that context as “a symbolic field of state power that dictates the composition of the citizenry, therefore affecting underlying ideals of identity and membership”. 115 Hence, the competence to decide on access to, but also loss of membership remains carefully guarded by the state and its representatives. 116

Therefore, the link between individuals and a state through citizenship can be described as threefold — it links a population to a territory and political governance, thereby establishing statehood, it links an individual with a state, thereby forming the basis for full and equal membership, and it links individuals to a specific state, thereby allowing for a nation state system. To fulfill these three functions, citizenship is generally a (relatively) stable and secure status. 117 The large majority of people acquire their citizenship at birth and keep that same citizenship throughout their entire life. The following section briefly discusses these main modes of acquisition and loss of citizenship.

3.2 Acquisition and Loss of Citizenship

How is citizenship acquired, or — from the perspective of the state — attributed? Acquisition and loss of citizenship is regulated at the national level. In general, citizenship can be acquired automatically, by declaration or registration or by naturalization. 118 The large majority of persons acquire citizenship at birth . 119 To do so, two different systems are dominant: acquiring citizenship on the basis of one’s place of birth — following the system of jus soli — and acquiring citizenship based on descent, ie from one’s parents’ citizenship at the moment of birth under the system of jus sanguinis . 120 Under both systems acquisition of citizenship occurs ex lege based on the fact of birth. 121 Historically, jus soli was the main principle of citizenship attribution in common-law countries, whereas jus sanguinis was prevalent civil-law jurisdictions. The US, other American states and the UK followed the principle of jus soli , whereas jus sanguinis was long predominant in continental Europe, Africa and Asia. As a recent study based on the globalcit database shows, all 177 states included in the database provide for jus sanguinis acquisition of citizenship — be it only to secure the acquisition of citizenship for children born to nationals residing abroad. 122 Thus, jus sanguinis today has an almost global reach. Jus soli , by contrast, is provided in 32 countries in an automatic and unconditional form, and in another 25 countries in a more restricted form. 123 In practice, most states — including European states — today apply a combination of both principles allowing for acquisition based on descent for children born to citizens and for some form of acquisition based on birth in the country at least for children born to non-citizens with a stable residence right. 124 International law does not prescribe the use of either of the two principles, nor does it exclude the possibility of attributing citizenship based on a different connecting factor. 125 Some authors, however, see a slight preference for the principle of jus soli in human rights instruments. 126

The extent to which a citizenship regime may be considered appropriately inclusive […] depends partly on the character of immigration policies, the availability of naturalisation procedures for immigrants and the possibility of renouncing citizenship where ties are lost. 131

In addition to acquisition at birth on the basis of jus soli and jus sanguinis , citizenship can be acquired after birth by declaration or registration, and, most importantly, through naturalization . 132 Weis defines naturalization as “the grant of nationality to an alien by a formal act, on an application made for the specific purpose by the alien”. 133 Acquiring citizenship through naturalization does not occur ex lege but is based on a decision of a public authority. The globalcit database shows that 170 of the 174 states listed in the dataset for ordinary naturalization have a provision in domestic law allowing for naturalization. 134

Some countries know an entitlement to naturalization, but in most cases naturalization is discretionary. 135 Thereby, naturalization is normally made contingent upon the fulfilment of certain criteria. 136 These criteria often relate to a certain period of residence, an immigration status, language skills, other integration criteria relating to civic knowledge or social contacts, the absence of a criminal record or a threat to state security, economic self-sufficiency or wealth, as well as, sometimes, a commitment to certain values or an expression of loyalty. 137 In practice the material barriers imposed by substantive naturalization requirements relating to civic integration and formal hindrances such as complicated procedures or excessive fees, as well as the discretion of the authorities involved set a high threshold for acquiring citizenship through naturalization. 138

In case of loss of citizenship, on the other hand, a distinction is usually made between renunciation , if citizenship is relinquished at the initiative of the individual, lapse , if citizenship is lost ex lege upon realization of certain grounds of loss, such as eg residence abroad for a certain time or the acquisition of another nationality, nullification if the acquisition of nationality is ex post declared to be null and void, and withdrawal if citizenship is deprived based on a decision of a public authority. 139

The human rights implications of these different modes of acquisition and loss of citizenship will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5 . For now, the discussion turns to the functions of citizenship from the persepective of the individual.

3.3 Functions of Citizenship

From the perspective of the individual citizenship is essential to access certain rights and, as a consequence thereof, has a significant impact on that person’s social identity. 140 This has been acknowledged by the ECtHR, which sees the concept of citizenship closely linked to a person’s social identity and hence their private life: 141

[T]he denial of citizenship may raise an issue under Article 8 [ echr ] because of its impact on the private life of an individual, which concept is wide enough to embrace aspects of a person’s social identity. 142

Thus, from the perspective of the individual, citizenship is more than an empty shell or a purely formal, neutral legal status. As the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism Tendayi Achiume notes, “[i]n reality, however, for all human beings, their capacity to enjoy full human rights depends on their citizenship, nationality or immigration status”. 143 Citizenship, in the famous words of Hannah Arendt, is the “right to have rights”. 144

[C]itizenship provides access to opportunities, rights, and benefits; it connotes legitimacy; it leads to mobilization by other actors; it spurs personal investment or more rapid socialization in the economic, civic or political life of the country; it signals to others particular skills, motivations, or time horizons; and it carries social psychological effects for social identity and collective solidarity. 146

In a similar manner, Matthew Gibney points to three key benefits of citizenship: “privileges, security and voice”. 147 Lindsey Kingston categorizes citizenship as giving rise to rights to place and rights to purpose which are both necessary for a dignified life. 148 Depending on one’s concept of citizenship, the relevance of the rights tied to it varies. From a republican conception of citizenship access to political rights and participation in political activities is the most important aspect. 149 A liberal concept of citizenship might put more weight on the fact that citizenship grants certain rights on an equal basis. 150 From a migration perspective, the right to territorial security is the central function of citizenship. 151 For the purposes of international law, three functions of citizenship as a legal status seem most important: diplomatic protection, political rights and the unconditional right to enter and remain in the state of nationality.

3.3.1 Diplomatic Protection

Historically, diplomatic protection has been one of the central functions of citizenship. As Weis writes, “international diplomatic protection is a right of the State, accorded to it by customary international law, to intervene on behalf of its own nationals, if their rights are violated by another State, in order to obtain redress”. 152 Diplomatic protection is, however, according to traditional international law, not a right of the individual but of the state. 153 It is the protection individuals may receive from their state of nationality if their rights are violated in another state. 154

This right [to exercise diplomatic protection] is necessarily limited to intervention on behalf of its own nationals because, in the absence of a special agreement, it is the bond of nationality between the State and the individual which alone confers upon the State the right of diplomatic protection […]. 156

Exceptions to this nationality-of-claims rule are only made regarding stateless persons and refugees that cannot avail themselves of the protection of their state of nationality. 157

3.3.2 Political Rights

Sie [politische Rechte] begründen die Zugehörigkeit zu einem politischen Gemeinwesen und ermöglichen dessen Mitgestaltung, sie sind aber auch Grundlage jeder Rechtssubjektivität, die in solchen Gemeinwesen wurzelt. 161

In a large sense, political rights cover different rights protecting participation in public life and political affairs: from the right to vote as such to more indirect forms of political engagement such as freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association, which are equally essential preconditions for functional democracies. 162

Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinctions […] and without unreasonable restrictions: (a) To take part in the conduct of public affairs […]; (b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections […]; (c) To have access […] to public service in his country. 165 (emphasis added)

This does not mean that non-citizens are never granted political rights. Some rights such as the right to freedom of expression, to freedom of assembly and to freedom of association apply to everyone, including non-citizens. 166 Moreover, an increasing number of states allow non-citizen residents to participate in elections and referenda — particularly at the local level and, in the case of the EU, at the supranational level — or even to be elected for public office. 167 The extension of the franchise to permanent resident non-citizens is also increasingly called for as a measure to foster integration and increase democratic legitimacy. 168 Nevertheless, non-citizens, in principle, cannot claim a right to take part in elections and public affairs in their state of residence based on international law. Therefore, the right to take part in elections and public affairs can, at least for now, not replace the right to citizenship regarding access to political rights. Political rights remain one of the central functions of citizenship. 169

3.3.3 Right to Enter and Remain

For the purposes of this study — and from a migration law perspective — the main function of citizenship, however, is the unconditional right to enter and remain . 170 Citizens have an unconditional right stay in their state of nationality, and if they leave, to return. Non-citizens, by contrast, can be denied entry into the territory and — within certain limits 171 — can be expelled. 172 A state, as the ECtHR repeatedly claimed, “is entitled, as a matter of international law […] to control the entry of aliens into its territory and their residence there”. 173 Thus, non-citizens are subject to a state’s exclusion power and “remain subject to potential removal”, as Bosniak writes. 174 The limitation of the prohibition of expulsion to nationals is enshrined, amongst others, also in Article 3 Protocol No. 4 to the echr : 175

1 No one shall be expelled, by means either of an individual or of a collective measure, from the territory of the State of which he is a national . 2 No one shall be deprived of the right to enter the territory of the state of which he is a national . (emphasis added)

The right to enter and remain in a state is of central importance for the enjoyment of all other rights. As David Owen notes, “the right to entry and residence is primary here since to possess civic rights in a given place, one has to have the freedom to be in (or return to) that place”. 176 In a similar manner Elspeth Guild sees the unconditional right to residence tied to citizenship as an essential element for a person’s identity “as it is the legal expression of the individual’s relationship to the territory and the state”. 177 Thus, the unconditional right to enter and remain — the right to territorial security — is the function of citizenship that likely has the most immediate and far-reaching practical consequences for the individual in their daily life. 178

Given the importance of these functions of citizenship for an individual’s life, it does have significant consequences for a person to be a citizen or not. In particular, the exclusionary power and the lack of territorial security remains one of the main reasons why access to (and retention of) citizenship remains so important. 179 As the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination concludes, “denial of citizenship for long-term or permanent residents could result in creating disadvantages for them in access to employment and social benefits” and possibly amount to discrimination. 180 The connection between citizenship and the right to enter and remain in a state also shows the direct link between migration law — or rather the legal framework regulating access to the territory of a state — and citizenship. 181 The following section shall examine this relationship between citizenship and human rights in more detail.

iii Citizenship as a Human Right

The functions of citizenship discussed in the previous section highlight the close relationship between human rights and citizenship. 182 In the relationship between citizenship and human rights, two different aspects must be distinguished. As noted by Carol Batchelor “nationality is not only a right of itself, it is a necessary precursor to the exercise of other rights”. 183 The following section will discuss these two facets of citizenship: On the one hand, that citizenship is a human rights issue in the sense that it secures access to other human rights ( iii .1). On the other hand, that citizenship in and of itself can be qualified as a moral ( iii .2) and legal human right ( iii .3).

1 Citizenship as Access to (Human) Rights

The rights discussed in the foregoing section show the continuing importance of citizenship for the enjoyment of citizens’ rights. 184 But also beyond the rights explicitly reserved for citizens, citizenship continues to be essential to safeguard access to and the enjoyment of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms at the domestic level. 185 Even though human rights by definition apply to everyone irrespective of their citizenship simply by virtue of their humanity, in practice citizenship remains a crucial prerequisite for the effective enjoyment of human rights. 186 The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, for example, explicitly allows its state parties to draw a distinction between citizens and non-citizens. This is just one example to highlight how important nationality still is to have unrestricted and effective access to rights. 187 Stephen Hall describes the right to nationality for that reason as “a civil and political meta-right of the most far reaching importance”. 188 The effective enforcement of human rights at the national level remains difficult without citizenship and access to protection, privileges and political voice remains closely tied to full legal membership status. 189 One would think that the decisive factor for the protection of one’s rights should be one’s humanity 190 yet citizenship remains crucial to effectively claim these rights in practice. 191

The lack of (legal) protection is most significant for persons that are stateless, ie “not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law”. 192 Stateless persons are subject to all sorts of restrictions and even privation of their rights. 193 The lack of a nationality, as the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom has held in the case of Secretary of State for the Home Department v Al-Jedda , results in “worldwide legal disabilities with terrible practical consequence”. 194 Thus, in our current international state-based system, statelessness continues to be an anomaly and a situation that leaves the persons concerned at risk of substantive violations of their basic human rights. 195 But also beyond statelessness, being a national not just somewhere, but in a place to which one has a substantial connection, is essential for a dignified life. 196 Moreover, some nationalities offer a stronger claim, better protection, more privileges and a louder political voice. 197 In that sense, citizenship appears to be a “birthright lottery”. 198 Hence, access to citizenship remains crucial not only for stateless persons and in a migration context, but generally to access rights and equal opportunities.

2 Citizenship as a Moral Human Right

The second aspect in the relationship between citizenship and human rights is whether citizenship itself qualifies as a human right — both as a moral or political human right in theoretical and philosophical debates, as well as a human right in legal doctrine. 199 This distinction between ‘moral or political human rights’ and ‘legal human rights’ is helpful for the purpose of this study to distinguish the discussion about a right to citizenship or membership in legal philosophy or political theory, and the actual incorporation of this right in the international legal framework. 200 Following such a distinction, moral human rights are those rights protecting the most elemental aspects of human dignity that are grounded in a normative ideal independent of their actual codification in positive law. As discussed in more detail below, legal human rights, by contrast, are those rights of individuals against a certain duty bearer, usually the state, that, in principle, are legally protected and codified in (international) law. 201 Thus, both moral and legal human rights share the rationale of protecting the fundamental human dignity of individuals against acts of a specific duty bearer. 202 The main distinctive feature between the two categories is the fact that legal human rights need a basis in positive (international) law and that they — at least theoretically — can be claimed and enforced in practice vis-à-vis state actors. 203

There are several normative accounts that argue why citizenship should be recognized as a moral human right. In the following section, some selected positions that recognize citizenship as a moral or political human right shall be discussed in more detail. 204 The positions discussed below can be distinguished from authors who maintain that citizenship is not a right or human right. Christian Joppke, for example, argues that “citizenship itself is not a right or ‘right to have rights’”. 205 Still others claim that citizenship is no longer a relevant category in an age of universal human rights. 206 Yasemin Soysal, for example, posited in the 1990ies that national citizenship will prevail as an identity at the level of the nation state but is no longer a significant construction “in terms of its translation into rights and privileges”. 207 Instead, she argues that a “new mode of membership, anchored in the universalistic rights of personhood” — a post-national membership — emerges. 208

2.1 Hannah Arendt’s Right to Have Rights

The Rights of Man, after all, had been defined as ‘inalienable’ because they were supposed to be independent of all governments; but it turned out that the moment human beings lacked their own government and had to fall back upon their minimum rights, no authority was left to protect them and no institution was willing to guarantee them. 211

For Arendt, the promise of universal human rights remains empty. 212 For her, the atrocities of World War ii made apparent that human rights cannot effectively materialize in the nation state system. In the war, stateless persons had lost not only their nationality and citizens’ rights, they also lost their human rights. They were left in a condition of fundamental rightlessness due to not belonging to any community whatsoever. 213 Arendt concludes that citizenship is the direct and indispensable prerequisite for the protection of rights and the possession of human rights. 214 For her, membership in the political community remains an essential element of being human. 215 The refugees left stateless after World War ii had had lost, first and above all, “a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective”. 216 Through that loss, Arendt posits, they were expelled from humanity. 217 With the loss of citizenship rights, these stateless persons effectively also lost their human rights: 218

Something much more fundamental than freedom and justice, which are rights of citizens, is at stake when belonging to the community into which one is born is no longer a matter of course and not belonging no longer a matter of choice, or when one is placed in a situation where, unless he commits a crime, his treatment by others does not depend on what he does or does not do. This extremity, and nothing else, is the situation of people deprived of human rights. They are deprived, not of the right to freedom, but of the right to action; not of the right to think whatever they please, but of the right to opinion. 219

Arendt argues that the stateless point to the existence of a ‘right to have rights’. If human rights flow from membership of a political community, the one true human right is the right to belong to such a community — the right to have rights. 223

Hence, Arendt does not see citizenship as a human right in an (international) legal sense. Her analysis of statelessness seems to be informed by her own experience during the Holocaust and is not necessarily transposable to today’s realities of statelessness. 224 Moreover, her conceptualization of belonging shows her republican understanding of citizenship. 225 Nevertheless, her conceptualization of citizenship as belonging to the community into which one is born as a precondition for a humane and dignified life provides an important theoretical foundation for the discussion of the right to citizenship in international human rights law. 226

2.2 Seyla Benhabib’s Cosmopolitan Right to Membership

Drawing on Immanuel Kant and Arendt’s work Seyla Benhabib develops her own argument for the recognition of citizenship as a human right. In her 2004 book ‘The Rights of Others’, she examines the consequences of transnational migration for the boundaries of political membership and challenges the doctrine of state sovereignty by arguing “that a cosmopolitan theory of justice cannot be restricted to schemes of just distribution on a global scale, but must also incorporate a vision of just membership ” (original emphasis). 227 This, in her opinion, entails a right to citizenship for non-citizens subject to certain conditions. Permanent alienage, she finds, “is not only incompatible with a liberal-democratic understanding of human community; it is also a violation of fundamental human rights”. 228 Other than Arendt who “cannot deconstruct the stark dichotomy between human rights and citizens’ rights”, Benhabib aims to bridge the gap between these two dimensions and incorporate citizenship into a universal human rights regime. 229 “The right to have rights”, she writes, “today means the recognition of the universal status of personhood of each and every human being independently of their national citizenship”. 230 The challenge for her is to decouple the right to have rights from the status of nationality.

Liberal democracies that would condemn decolonizing nations for these practices [rendering people stateless] must themselves accept naturalization, i.e., admittance to citizenship, as the obverse side of the injunction against denaturalization. Just as you cannot render individuals stateless at will, nor can you, as a sovereign state, deny them membership in perpetuity. You may stipulate certain criteria of membership, but they can never be of such a kind that others would be permanently barred from becoming a member of your polity. Theocratic, authoritarian, fascist, and nationalist regimes do this, but liberal democracies ought not to. 231

Drawing on discourse theory, she bases her claim on the right to communicative freedom. 232 She argues that there would never be reciprocally acceptable, permissible grounds to justify barring certain persons or groups permanently from membership because of the kinds of human beings they are. 233 The only criteria for membership that “do not violate the self-understanding of liberal democracies as associations which respect the communicative freedom of human beings qua human beings” are criteria that stipulate certain qualifications, skills or resources such as length of stay, language competence, civic literacy, material resources or marketable skills. 234 The right to membership, according to Benhabib, also entails a right to know how to acquire membership — the conditions for naturalization must be transparent, information accessible and procedures not arbitrary: 235

There must be a clear procedure, administered in lawful fashion, through which naturalization can occur and there must be a right of appeal in the event of a negative outcome, as there would be in most civil cases. One must not criminalize the immigrant and the foreigners; one must safeguard their right to due process, to representation in one’s language, and the right to independent counsel. 236

what would be objectionable from a moral point of view is the absence of any procedure or possibility for foreigners and resident aliens to become citizens at all; that is, if naturalization were not permitted at all, or if it were restricted on the basis of religious, ethnic, racial, and sexual preference grounds, this would violate the human right to membership. 237

Thus, according to Benhabib non-citizen migrants do have a (moral) human right to membership. 238

2.3 Ruth Rubio-Marín’s Jus Domicilii

all those who live on a permanent basis in a liberal democratic state ought to be considered members of that democracy and thus share in the sphere of civic equality with the equal recognition of rights and duties. […] to the extent that the enjoyment of a full and equal set of rights and duties, within the political community of the state remains attached to the recognition of the formal status of national citizenship, after a certain residence period permanent resident aliens, both legal and illegal, ought to be automatically, and thus unconditionally, recognized as citizens of the state, regardless of whether or not they already enjoy the status of national citizens in some other community, and hence, whether or not that second citizenship makes of them dual or multiple nationals. 242

Rather than being deprived of its right to ‘self-definition’ concerning membership, I argue that the national community cannot exercise such a right vis-à-vis those whom it should consider full members according to democratic principles. 248 (original emphasis)

The nationality community for her becomes “an ever-changing entity which has to take account of the social realities already operating within its territory”. 249 Beyond those who already belong to the community through permanent residence, however, the state remains free to shape its laws regarding citizenship, immigration, and naturalization: “to a large extent the distribution of membership will essentially remain a matter of democratic self-determination and will presumably be guided by national self-interest”. 250 The claim to automatic incorporation, for her, “challenges not the traditional state prerogatives on membership so much as their scope”. 251

In a world with increasing human mobility which more and more shows the insufficiencies of simply assuming that people will be exclusively rooted in one country, only the claim of automatic membership through residence advanced here would serve such a purpose. The major rules for allocating citizenship, jus soli and jus sanguinis , operate automatically. The idea thus would be to introduce automatic membership through residence in order to update the automaticity rule and to keep the inclusive and protective purpose that it serves adapted to a new and increasingly widespread social reality. 256 (original emphasis)

The normative argument why democratic societies should grant permanent residents irrespective of their legal status an automatic and unconditional right to citizenship developed by Rubio-Marín is also convincing.

2.4 Joseph Carens’ Theory of Social Membership

rests primarily on the distinction between members and others, and on a claim about the moral significance of social membership. Once democratic states have admitted immigrants as permanent residents, they are obliged not to marginalize them, not to exclude them from the security and opportunities that the rights of membership bring. In sum, long-term residence in society creates a moral entitlement to the legal rights of membership. 259

democratic principles severely limit the conditions which a democratic state may impose as prerequisites for citizenship. While states may exercise some discretion in the rules they establish for naturalization, they are obliged to respect the claims of belonging that arise from living in a political community on an ongoing basis. 261

At some point, the threshold is passed. They have been there long enough that they simply are members of the community with a strong moral claim to have that membership officially recognized by the state by its granting of citizenship, or at least a right to citizenship if they want it. 265

The principle of democratic legitimacy provides a second ground for the argument that everyone should be granted citizenship rights to participate in the political process. 266 Regarding possible criteria for the acquisition of citizenship he finds that “it is not morally permissible for a democratic state to make access to citizenship contingent upon what a person thinks or believes”. 267 Equally, he rejects an obligation to renounce the former nationality, good character or economic self-sufficiency requirements and language and civil knowledge tests as unjust and potentially discriminatory. 268 Hence, the only acceptable criterion for naturalization is residence over a certain period of time. 269 Residence over time results in social membership and social membership forms the basis for moral claims to citizenship. 270

2.5 Ayelet Shachar’s Jus Nexi

In her book ‘The Birthright Lottery’, Shachar combines citizenship with property law and arguments of global justice. 271 She critically assesses “the existing legal regimes for allocating entitlement to political membership”. 272 Based on that analysis she argues that both jus soli and jus sanguinis are arbitrary criteria for attributing political membership, which “distribute voice and opportunity in a vastly unequal manner” and draws an analogy between birthright citizenship and inherited property. 273 She questions the purely formal and apolitical transfer of membership on the basis of birthright and argues that the current system “serves to legitimize (and make invisible) the significant intergenerational transfers of wealth and power, as well as security and opportunity”. 274 She claims that this

idea of allocating political membership on the basis of ascription is at odds with the foundations of civic nationalism, which stresses the value of choice by the governed. Unlike consent, merit, achievement, residency, compensation, or need, the acquisition of automatic (birthright) membership in the polity is, arguably, the least defensible basis for distributing access to citizenship because it allocates rights and opportunities according to aspects of our situation that result from unchosen circumstances that are fully beyond our control. This runs counter to the core principles of liberal and democratic theory. 275

While Shachar acknowledges that birthright citizenship principles may be explained by administrative convenience, this is not sufficient to justify the global inequalities caused by such system. 276

In order to address these inequalities she proposes a two-stage approach: on the one hand, she proposes a “birthright privilege levy on the transfer of political membership to address the global distributive consequences of birthright citizenship”. 277 Such a levy collected in wealthier polities could function as an instrument of global justice to balance out the “coercive and unjust effects of this regime and fund worldwide redistribution of opportunity”, and thereby “strengthen the enabling function of membership everywhere”. 278 On the other hand, she suggests supplementing or ultimately even replacing birthright citizenship with a genuine connection principle of citizenship acquisition — the so-called principle of jus nexi . 279 This jus nexi principle should establish

that citizenship must account for more than the mere automatic transmission of entitlement. Instead, some proximity must be established between full membership status in the polity and an actual share in its rights and obligations, responding to the democratic legitimacy concerns raised by both under- and overinclusion. 280

She argues that

jus nexi offers resident stakeholders a predictable and secure route to becoming full members, irrespective of their lack of birth-based connection to the polity. In this respect, jus nexi allows both greater democratic accountability and political equality for those who are most directly affected by the legal authority of the state […]. 281 (original emphasis)

Rather than arguing for more open citizenship regimes, Shachar criticizes the attribution of citizenship through the birthright-based modes of jus soli and jus sanguinis as such. To overcome the structural injustices of birthright citizenship, political membership should be based “on actual membership and social attachment rather than mere birthright entitlement”. 282

2.6 David Owen’s Right to a Nationality

Owen , in a recent article, returns to Arendt’s reflections on ‘the right to have rights’ and Shachar’s jus nexi and argues that equal membership in global political society and the organization of equal political standing of individuals in an international order of self-ruling territorial states, requires constructing the right to have nationality rights . 283 Looking at the issue of statelessness, he notes that statelessness, nationality rights and governmental conceptions of national community are deeply entangled. 284 Therefore, he argues, it is necessary to have “a normative conception of the institution of state citizenship that identifies which persons have legitimate claims to membership of which state”. 285 Such a normative conception

of the institution of state citizenship in an international order of plural self-ruling states is not simply to allocate persons to states on the basis of unilateral state choices or unilateral individual choices but on the basis of a reciprocal relationship between individuals and states. 286

Then turning to the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of one’s nationality, Owen finds that citizenship rules in a global political society of plural autonomous states have two functions: first, to make sure that everyone is a citizen of a state and has equal standing in global society and, second, to “link persons to states in ways that best serve the common interest”. 287 Therefore, a system in which states have a discretionary right to determine their own citizenship rules, in his opinion is not compatible with a right not to be arbitrarily deprived of one’s nationality. 288

[A] norm of state discretion subject to merely to constraint against statelessness is not a legitimate basis for international order. Rather the legitimacy of this political order requires that it acknowledges ius nexi as a basic constitutional principle and, hence, a human right to naturalize under conditions where a person has a genuine link to a state. 289 (original emphasis)

He concludes that the right to have nationality rights is central for equal membership in global political society. 290

The positions summarized all develop a normative standpoint why the acquisition of citizenship is a moral human right, even though they present different theoretical explanations for that right. Generally, all six authors agree that under certain conditions non-citizens have a moral right to citizenship. However, they differ on the conditions that may be imposed. Rubio-Marín and Carens argue for a right to citizenship based solely on residence, while Benhabib allows for further conditions as long as they are not discriminatory, and they do not bar access to citizenship permanently. Owen and Shachar, finally, suggest a right to citizenship based on jus nexi . While these are specific positions, Owen notes more generally that “[f]rom a normative standpoint, it appears that a human right to a national citizenship is robustly supported irrespective of the general approach to, or particular theoretical articulation of, human rights that one adopts”. 291

3 Citizenship as a Legal Human Right

An understanding of citizenship in the full context of human rights has the potential to turn this relationship upside down. The recognition of the right to be a citizen as a human right implies that the State is dethroned as the author and owner of citizenship. 293

Introducing the distinction between moral and legal human rights in the previous section, I have described legal human rights as entitlements of individuals against a state that find their basis in positive law. With Walter Kälin and Jörg Künzli human rights in a legal sense can be defined as

internationally guaranteed legal entitlements of individuals vis-à-vis the state, which serve to protect fundamental characteristics of the human person and his or her dignity in peacetime and in times of armed conflict. 294

Four constitutive elements can be distinguished here: legal human rights aim to protect human dignity; they protect rights of individuals against a state; and — other than moral human rights — are guaranteed by international law.

(a) Be consistent with the existing body of international human rights law; (b) Be of fundamental character and derive from the inherent dignity and worth of the human person; (c) Be sufficiently precise to give rise to identifiable and predictable rights and obligations; (d) Provide, where appropriate, realistic and effective implementation machinery, including reporting systems; (e) Attract broad international support. 295

The previous section has shown that the right to citizenship is of fundamental character and derived from — or rather indispensable for the protection of — the inherent dignity and worth of individuals in a state-based world order. The question, then, is how this moral-political claim to citizenship can be transposed to the legal sphere. Is the right to citizenship also consistent with international human rights law? Is it sufficiently precise to give rise to identifiable and predictable rights and obligations? Are there appropriate and effective implementation mechanisms for the right to citizenship? And does it attract broad international support?

Based on the elements set out in Resolution 41/120 these questions shall be analyzed in the following chapters. Chapter 4 will look at international human rights law and answer the questions of whether the right to citizenship is consistent with that framework and what implementation mechanisms there are in the international system that protect this right. Chapter 5 will then assess the rights and obligations under the right to citizenship and ask whether they are identifiable and predictable enough to give rise to enforceable individual entitlements. First, however, Chapter 3 will look at the international support for the right to citizenship and critically reflect on the status of the traditional doctrine of citizenship as a domaine réservé in current international legal theory. The normative accounts for a moral right to citizenship developed just discussed will inform the subsequent analysis of the transposition of the right to citizenship in current international human rights law.

Nottebohm (Liechtenstein v Guatemala) [1955] icj Reports 1955, p. 4 23.

See eg Mirna Adjami and Julia Harrington, ‘The Scope and Content of Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ (2008) 27 Refugee Survey Quarterly 93, 94 n 2; Ruth Donner, The Regulation of Nationality in International Law (2nd ed, Transnational Publishers 1994) xv; Matthew J Gibney, ‘Statelessness and Citizenship in Ethical and Political Perspective’ in Alice Edwards and Laura van Waas (eds), Nationality and Statelessness under International Law (Cambridge University Press 2014) 46; Ernst Hirsch Ballin, Citizens’ Rights and the Right to Be a Citizen (Brill Nijhoff 2014) 71; Sandra Mantu, Contingent Citizenship: The Law and Practice of Citizenship Deprivation in International, European and National Perspectives (Brill Nijhoff 2015) 5; Anne Peters, ‘Extraterritorial Naturalizations: Between the Human Right to Nationality, State Sovereignty and Fair Principles of Jurisdiction’ (2010) 53 German Yearbook of International Law 623, 625; Katja Swider, ‘A Rights-Based Approach to Statelessness’ (University of Amsterdam 2018) 22; Yaffa Zilbershats, The Human Right to Citizenship (Transnational Publishers 2002) 5; Ruth Rubio-Marín, Immigration as a Democratic Challenge: Citizenship and Inclusion in Germany and the United States (Cambridge University Press 2000) 19 n 7; Jo Shaw, The People in Question: Citizens and Constitutions in Uncertain Times (Bristol University Press 2020) 19 ff. See also Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, ‘General Recommendation No. 32 on the Gender-Related Dimensions of Refugee Status, Asylum, Nationality and Statelessness of Women’ (CtteeEDAW 2014) UN Doc. cedaw/c/gc /32 para 52. Implicitly also David Owen, ‘On the Right to Have Nationality Rights: Statelessness, Citizenship and Human Rights’ (2018) 65 Netherlands International Law Review 299. See for a critical account of this practice Katherine Tonkiss, ‘Statelessness and the Performance of Citizenship-As-Nationality’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds), Understanding Statelessness (Routledge 2017).

See for a detailed discussion Olivier Vonk, Nationality Law in the Western Hemisphere: A Study on Grounds for Acquisition and Loss of Citizenship in the Americas and the Caribbean (Brill Nijhoff 2014) 24 ff. See also Mantu (n 3) 5; Kim Rubenstein, ‘Globalization and Citizenship and Nationality’ in Catherine Dauvergne (ed), Jurisprudence for an Interconnected Globe (Ashgate 2003) 161; Swider, ‘Rights-Based Approach to Statelessness’ (n 3) 20 ff.

‘Nationality, (n.)’, Oxford English Dictionary, < https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/125292?redirectedFrom=nationality& >.

‘Citizenship, (n.)’, Oxford English Dictionary, < https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/33521?redirectedFrom=citizenship#eid >.

See eg International Law Commission, ‘Report on Nationality, Including Statelessness’ (International Law Commission 1952) UN Doc. a/cn .4/50 6 < http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/documentation/english/a_cn4_50.pdf >. See further Eric Fripp, Nationality and Statelessness in the International Law of Refugee Status (Hart Publishing 2016) 93; Gerard-René de Groot and Olivier Vonk, International Standards on Nationality Law: Texts, Cases and Materials (Wolf Legal Publishers 2016) 3.

Paul Weis, Nationality and Statelessness in International Law (2nd ed, Sijthoff & Noordhoff 1979) 3.

Vonk, Nationality Law in the Western Hemisphere (n 4) 24. See also International Law Commission, ‘Hudson Report’ (n 8) 6 f. See also Delia Rudan, ‘Nationality and Political Rights’ in Alessandra Annoni and Serena Forlati (eds), The Changing Role of Nationality in International Law (Routledge 2013) 117.

de Groot and Vonk (n 8) 3.

Sükrü Uslucan, Zur Weiterentwicklungsfähigkeit des Menschenrechts auf Staatsangehörigkeit: Deutet sich in Europa ein migrationsbedingtes Recht auf Staatsangehörigkeit an — auch unter Hinnahme der Mehrstaatigkeit? (Duncker & Humblot 2012) 42.

Hailbronner finds the term ‘ Staatsbürgerschaft ’ to be useless (“ unbrauchbar ”) for the problems relating to nationality in constitutional and international law, Kay Hailbronner and others (eds), Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht (6. Aufl., ch Beck 2017) 30. See also Benito Aláez Corral, ‘Staatsangehörigkeit und Staatsbürgerschaft vor den Herausforderungen des demokratischen Verfassungsstaates’ (2007) 46 Der Staat 349. In the Swiss German context Bürgerrecht is used rather than Staatsangehörigkeit or Staatsbürgerschaft , Alberto Achermann and Barbara von Rütte, ‘Kommentar zu Art. 37 BV’ in Bernhard Waldmann, Eva Maria Belser and Astrid Epiney (eds), Bundesverfassung (Helbing Lichtenhahn 2015) 775; Brigitte Studer, Gérald Arlettaz and Regula Argast, Das Schweizer Bürgerrecht: Erwerb, Verlust, Entzug von 1848 bis zur Gegenwart (Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung 2008) 16.

Weis, Nationality in International Law (n 9) 4 f. See also Vonk, Nationality Law in the Western Hemisphere (n 4) 25.

Rubenstein (n 4) 161.

See eg Saskia Sassen, ‘Towards Post-National and Denationalized Citizenship’ in Engin F Isin and Bryan S Turner (eds), Handbook of Citizenship Studies ( sage Publications 2002) 278.

See eg Verena Stolcke, ‘The “Nature” of Nationality’ in Veit Michael Bader (ed), Citizenship and Exclusion (MacMillan Press, St Martin’s Press 1997) 62 f.

For a legal study using citizenship (“ Bürgerschaft ”) as a concept broader than nationality (“ Staatsangehörigkeit ”) see Anuscheh Farahat, Progressive Inklusion: Zugehörigkeit und Teilhabe im Migrationsrecht (Springer 2014) 120. See also Kristin Henrard, ‘The Shifting Parameters of Nationality’ (2018) 65 Netherlands International Law Review 269, 272. Kostakopoulou uses the notion of ‘nationality model of citizenship’ to refer to the dominant paradigm of membership in the nation state, Dora Kostakopoulou, The Future Governance of Citizenship (Cambridge University Press 2008).

Kim Rubenstein and Daniel Adler, ‘International Citizenship: The Future of Nationality in a Globalized World’ (2000) 7 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 519, 552.

Zilbershats (n 3) 4. See also Siegfried Wiessner, ‘Blessed Be the Ties That Bind: The Nexus between Nationality and Territory’ (1986) 56 Mississippi Law Journal 447, 449 f.

Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, 12 April 1930, lnts Vol. 179, p. 89 (‘1930 Convention’).

American Convention on Human Rights, 22 November 1969, 1144 unts 123, oas Treaty Series No. 36 (‘American Convention’, ‘ achr ’).

Arab Charter on Human Rights, 23 May 2004, reprinted in 12 International Human Rights Reports 893 (2005) (‘Arab Charter’, ‘ArCHR’).

European Convention on Nationality, 6 November 1997, ets No. 166 (‘ ecn ’).

Draft Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Specific Aspects of the Right to a Nationality and the Eradication of Statelessness in Africa, Draft adopted September 2015, revised June 2018 (‘Draft Protocol on Nationality’ or ‘AU Draft Protocol’).

The UN Human Rights Committee and the CoE bodies use the term ‘nationality’ in resolutions touching upon nationality matters, see eg UN Commission on Human Rights, ‘Resolution 1999/28 on Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality’ (UN Human Rights Commission 1999) UN Doc. e/cn .4/ res /1999/28; UN Commission on Human Rights, ‘Resolution 2005/45 on Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality’ (UN Human Rights Commission 2005) UN Doc. e/cn .4/ res /2005/45; Human Rights Council, ‘Resolution 7/10 on Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality’ ( hrc 2008) UN Doc. a/hrc/res /7/10; Human Rights Council, ‘Resolution 10/13 on Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality’ ( hrc 2009) UN Doc. a/hrc/res /10/13; Human Rights Council, ‘Resolution 13/2 on Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality’ ( hrc 2010) UN Doc. a/hrc/res /13/2; Human Rights Council, ‘Resolution 20/5 on Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality’ ( hrc 2012) UN Doc. a/hrc/res /20/5; Human Rights Council, ‘Resolution 20/4 on the Right to a Nationality: Women and Children’ ( hrc 2012) UN Doc. a/hrc/res /20/4; Human Rights Council, ‘Resolution 26/14 on Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality’ ( hrc 2014) UN Doc. a/hrc/res /26/14; Human Rights Council, ‘Resolution 32/5 on Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality’ ( hrc 2016) UN Doc. a/hrc/res /32/5; Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers, ‘Recommendation No. R (84) 21 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on the Acquisition by Refugees of the Nationality of the Host Country’ (Committee of Ministers 1984); Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers, ‘Recommendation No. R (99) 18 on the Avoidance and the Reduction of Statelessness’ (Committee of Ministers 1999); Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers, ‘Recommendation Rec(2000)15 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States Concerning the Security of Residence of Long-Term Migrants’ (Committee of Ministers 2000); Council of Europe, Committee of Ministers, ‘Recommendation cm /Rec(2009)13 of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on the Nationality of Children’ (Committee of Ministers 2009) cm /Rec(2009)13; Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ‘Resolution 417 (1969) on Acquisition by Refugees of the Nationality of Their Country of Residence’ ( pace 1969); Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ‘Recommendation 696 (1973) on Certain Aspects of the Acquisition of Nationality’ ( pace 1973); Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ‘Resolution 2099 (2016) on the Need to Eradicate Statelessness of Children’ ( pace 2016); Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ‘Resolution 2263 (2019) on Withdrawing Nationality as a Measure to Combat Terrorism: A Human Rights-Compatible Approach?’ ( pace 2019). See by contrast Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ‘Recommendation 1500 (2001) on Participation of Immigrants and Foreign Residents in Political Life in the Council of Europe Member States’ ( pace 2001). The UN Global Compact on Migration speaks of ‘nationality’ as well as ‘citizenship’, UN General Assembly, ‘Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,General Assembly Resolution 73/195’ (UN General Assembly 2018) UN Doc. a/res /73/195.

Nationality Decrees Issued in Tunis and Morocco (Advisory Opinion) [1923] pcij Series B No. 4; Nottebohm (n 1); Baruch Ivcher Bronstein v Peru [2001] IACtHR Series C No. 74; Case of the Girls Yean and Bosico v Dominican Republic [2005] IACtHR Series C No. 130 (2005) 92.

John K Modise v Botswana [2000] ACmHPR Communication No. 97/93; The Nubian Community in Kenya v The Republic of Kenya [2015] ACmHPR Communication No. 317/06; Anudo Ochieng Anudo v United Republic of Tanzania [2018] ACtHPR Application No. 012/2015; dr v Australia, Communication No 42/2008 [2009] CtteeERD UN Doc. cerd/c /75/ d /42/2008; Benon Pjetri v Switzerland, Communication No 53/2013 [2016] CtteeERD UN Doc. cerd/c /91/ d /53/2013; Borzov v Estonia, Communication No 1136/2002 [2004] HRCttee UN Doc. ccpr/c /81/ d /1136/2002; Sipin v Estonia, Communication No 1432/2005 [2008] HRCttee UN Doc. ccpr/c /93/ d /1423/2005; Q v Denmark, Communication No 2001/2010 [2015] HRCttee UN Doc. ccpr/c /113/ d /2001/2010.

See eg Karassev v Finland (Decision) [1999] ECtHR Application No. 31414/96; Genovese v Malta [2011] ECtHR Application No. 53124/09; Petropavlovskis v Latvia [2015] ECtHR Application No. 44230/06; Ramadan v Malta [2016] ECtHR Application No. 76136/12; K2 v The United Kingdom (Decision) [2017] ECtHR Application No. 42387/13; Hoti v Croatia [2018] ECtHR Application No. 63311/14; Alpeyeva and Dzhalagoniya v Russia [2018] ECtHR Application Nos. 7549/09 and 33330/11; Said Abdul Salam Mubarak v Denmark (Decision) [2019] ECtHR Application No. 74411/16.

Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 4 November 1950, ets No. 5 (‘European Convention on Human Rights’, ‘ echr ’).

See exemplarily Article 20(1) of Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (consolidated version, 26 October 2012, oj c 326/47, ‘ tfeu ’) which states that “Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship ” (emphasis added).

Peter J Spiro, ‘A New International Law of Citizenship’ (2011) 105 The American Journal of International Law 694, 695. See also Decaux who argues that “[a]ujourd’hui on parlerait sans doute plus commodément de ‘citizenship’ pour éviter toute connotation avec le débat sur les minorités nationales”, Emmanuel Decaux, ‘Le droit à une nationalité, en tant que droit de l’homme’ (2011) 22 Revue trimestrielle des droits de l’homme 237, 240.

Hirsch Ballin (n 3) 71. See also Caia Vlieks, Ernst Hirsch Ballin and Maria Jose Recalde-Vela, ‘Solving Statelessness: Interpreting the Right to Nationality’ (2017) 35 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 158, 161.

Similarly also Alison Kesby, The Right to Have Rights: Citizenship, Humanity, and International Law (Oxford University Press 2012) 64 f.

“Die Staatsangehörigkeit besteht so lange wie der Staat selbst, den in allen Zeitabschnitten der Geschichte der Menschheit haben die Staaten, welche auch ihre Form gewesen sein mag, ein persönliches Substrat gehabt”, Alexander N Makarov, Allgemeine Lehren des Staatsangehörigkeitsrechts (1. Aufl., W Kohlhammer 1947) 17.

JGA Pocock, ‘The Ideal of Citizenship Since Classical Times’ [1992] Queen’s Quarterly 31, 31. See for a discussion of earlier as well as non-Western forms of socio-political organization Alexander C Diener, ‘Re-Scaling the Geography of Citizenship’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017) 38 ff.

Nevertheless, there was no uniform understanding of citizenship in ancient Greece, see Kostakopoulou (n 19) 15.

Gonçalo Matias, Citizenship as a Human Right, The Fundamental Right to a Specific Citizenship (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) 13.

See Pocock (n 37) 31. See for a feminist critique of Pocock’s categorization Susan Moller Okin, ‘Women, Equality, and Citizenship’ (1992) 99 Queen’s Quarterly 56.

Pocock (n 37) 34.

Kostakopoulou (n 19) 15. See also David Scott Fitzgerald, ‘The History of Racialized Citizenship’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017) 133.

Matias (n 39) 21. See also Ryan K Balot, ‘Revisiting the Classical Ideal of Citizenship’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017) 24.

Pocock (n 37) 37.

See Balot (n 43) 18.

Richard Bellamy, Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2008) 29.

Pocock (n 37) 38.

Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton University Press 2006) 19.

See eg Christian Joppke, ‘The Instrumental Turn of Citizenship’ [2019] 45 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 858, 860 f.

See eg Balot (n 43) 18.

Kostakopoulou (n 19) 16.

Matias (n 39) 30 f.

Kostakopoulou (n 19) 18.

Makarov (n 36) 17. Bauböck sees the ‘Westphalian conception’ of citizenship as a third, distinctly modern form of citizenship whose primary function is to establish a mechanism for determining individual membership in the international state system. Such Westphalian citizenship, as he notes, would correlate to the notion of “nationality in international law”, Rainer Bauböck, ‘Genuine Links and Useful Passports: Evaluating Strategic Uses of Citizenship’ (2019) 45 Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 1015, 1017. See in more detail Chapter 3 .

See Diener (n 37) 44. See for the evolution of the notion of citizenship in the American context Linda K Kerber, ‘The Meanings of Citizenship’ (1997) 84 The Journal of American History 833.

Matias (n 39) 34.

Kostakopoulou (n 19) 25.

See also Galina Cornelisse, Immigration Detention and Human Rights: Rethinking Territorial Sovereignty (Martinus Nijhoff 2010) 74 ff.

Stolcke (n 18) 64. See also Kostakopoulou (n 19) 26.

See for a detailed postcolonial account of citizenship and further references Kamal Sadiq, ‘Postcolonial Citizenship’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017); and Fitzgerald (n 42).

Kerber (n 58) 834. See also Iris Marion Young, ‘Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship’ (1989) 99 Ethics 250; Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Women, Citizenship and Difference’ (1997) 57 Feminist Review on Women and Citizenship 4.

See eg Bosniak, Citizen and Alien (n 50) 19.

See also Veit Michael Bader, ‘Citizenship of the European Union. Human Rights, Rights of Citizens of the Union and of Member States’ (1999) 12 Ratio Juris 153, 156 f. See also the proposal for a fourfold typology of basic conceptions of citizenship based on the underlying interests developed by Rainer Bauböck and Vesco Paskalev, ‘Cutting Genuine Links: A Normative Analysis of Citizenship Deprivation’ (2015) 30 Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 47.

See Ayelet Shachar and others, ‘Introduction: Citizenship — Quo Vadis?’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017) 4.

Audrey Macklin, ‘Who Is the Citizen’s Other? Considering the Heft of Citizenship’ (2007) 8 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 333, 334.

Linda Bosniak, ‘Citizenship Denationalized’ (2000) 7 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 447, 455. See for similar categories also Irene Bloemraad, ‘Does Citizenship Matter?’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017) 526 f; Christian Joppke, ‘Transformation of Citizenship: Status, Rights, Identity’ (2007) 11 Citizenship Studies 37; Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman, ‘Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship Theory’ (1994) 104 Ethics 352.

Bloemraad (n 69) 527.

Bosniak, Citizen and Alien (n 50) 17.

Linda Bosniak, ‘Multiple Nationality and the Postnational Transformation of Citizenship’ in David A Martin and Kay Hailbronner (eds), Rights and Duties of Dual Nationals: Evolution and Prospects (Kluwer Law International 2003) 45.

See eg Bosniak, ‘Citizenship Denationalized’ (n 69); Daniel Loick, ‘Wir Flüchtlinge. Überlegungen zu einer Bürgerschaft jenseits des Nationalstaats’ (2017) 45 Leviathan 574; Saskia Sassen, Losing Control?: Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization (Columbia University Press 1996); Yasemin Soysal, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe (University of Chicago 1994); Neil Walker, ‘The Place of Territory in Citizenship’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017).

See Bosniak, Citizen and Alien (n 50) 20 ff.

See also Vanessa Barker, ‘Democracy and Deportation: Why Membership Matters Most’ in Katia Franko Aas and Mary Bosworth (eds), The Borders of Punishment: Migration, Citizenship, and Social Exclusion (Oxford University Press 2013) 238.

Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Harvard University Press 1992) 21. See also Chapter 6 .

Bosniak, Citizen and Alien (n 50) 99.

See Barker (n 76); Stephen Castles, ‘Nation and Empire: Hierarchies of Citizenship in the New Global Order’ (2005) 42 International Politics 203; Yossi Harpaz, Citizenship 2.0: Dual Nationality as a Global Asset (Princeton University Press 2019). See for a ranking of the most ‘valuable’ nationalities Dimitry Kochenov and Justin Lindeboom (eds), Kälin and Kochenov’s Quality of Nationality Index: An Objective Ranking of the Nationalities of the World (Hart Publishing 2020).

The terminology is owed to a discussion with Audrey Macklin in the context of the 1st Expert Meeting of Academics: Statelessness, Citizenship & Inclusion, at the nyu Center for Global Affairs in June 2017. See also Tendayi Bloom, Noncitizenism: Recognising Noncitizen Capabilities in a World of Citizens (Routledge 2018); Indira Goris, Julia Harrington and Sebastian Köhn, ‘Statelessness: What It Is and Why It Matters’ (2009) 32 Forced Migration Review 4; Lindsey N Kingston, Fully Human: Personhood, Citizenship, and Rights (Oxford University Press 2019); Macklin, ‘The Citizen’s Other’ (n 68) 354; Jason Tucker, ‘Questioning de Facto Statelessness: By Looking at de Facto Citizenship’ (2014) 19 Tilburg Law Review 276.

Diener (n 37) 53.

Mantu (n 3) 3.

Bosniak, Citizen and Alien (n 50) 33. Similarly also Kingston (n 80). See further Castles who distinguishes four differentiating contradictions of citizenship, Castles (n 79) 205.

See among many Fitzgerald (n 42); Ratna Kapur, ‘The Citizen and the Migrant: Postcolonial Anxieties, Law, and the Politics of Exclusion/Inclusion’ (2007) 8 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 537; Leti Volpp, ‘Feminist, Sexual, and Queer Citizenship’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (2017); Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford University Press 2010); Yuval-Davis (n 64).

Rubenstein (n 4) 163.

Kerber (n 58) 854. See also Farahat (n 19) 54; Daniel Thym, ‘Frontiers of EU Citizenship: Three Trajectories and Their Methodological Limitations’ in Dimitry Kochenov (ed), EU Citizenship and Federalism. The Role of Rights (Cambridge University Press 2017) 713.

See also Myres S McDougal, Harold D Lasswell and Lung-chu Chen, Human Rights and World Public Order: The Basic Policies of an International Law of Human Dignity (Yale University Press 1980) 597 f.

See also Mantu (n 3) 3.

Karen Knop, ‘Relational Nationality: On Gender and Nationality in International Law’ in T Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer (eds), Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and Practices (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2001). See also Irene Bloemraad and Alicia Sheares, ‘Understanding Membership in a World of Global Migration: (How) Does Citizenship Matter?’ (2017) 51 International Migration Review 855.

Observing a denationalization of citizenship: Bosniak, ‘Citizenship Denationalized’ (n 69); Sassen, ‘Post-National Citizenship’ (n 17). Observing a diminishment of the importance of citizenship due to the proliferation of rights irrespective of citizenship: David Jacobson, Rights Across Borders: Immigration and the Decline of Citizenship (Johns Hopkins University Press 1996); Soysal (n 73). Claiming that citizenship is back “with a vengeance”: Catherine Dauvergne, ‘Citizenship with a Vengeance’ (2007) 8 Theoretical Inquiries in Law 489.

Bauböck, ‘Genuine Links and Useful Passports’ (n 57); Christian Joppke, ‘The Inevitable Lightening of Citizenship’ (2010) 51 European Journal of Sociology 9; Joppke, ‘Instrumental Turn’ (n 51); Ayelet Shachar, ‘The Marketization of Citizenship in an Age of Restrictionism’ (2018) 32 Ethics & International Affairs 3.

Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, ‘Human Rights Law and National Sovereignty in Collusion: The Plight of Quasi-Nationals at Strasbourg’ (2003) 21 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 63, 93.

Linda Bosniak, ‘Persons and Citizens in Constitutional Thought’ (2010) 8 International Journal of Constitutional Law 9, 11.

See also Ayelet Shachar, The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard University Press 2009) 10. With regard to naturalization see Ricky van Oers, Deserving Citizenship. Citizenship Tests in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (Brill Nijhoff 2013). See on the principles of jus soli and jus sanguinis in more detail below Chapter 2, ii .3.2 .

Makarov (n 36) 31.

Makarov thereby tries to reconcile the two positions understanding citizenship either as a legal status or a legal, quasi-contractual relationship, see ibid 22 ff.

Bosniak, ‘Citizenship Denationalized’ (n 69) 456; Rubenstein (n 4) 162.

Ruvi Ziegler, Voting Rights of Refugees (Cambridge University Press 2017) 92.

Nottebohm (n 1) 23.

Advisory Opinion on Proposed Amendments to the Naturalization Provision of the Constitution of Costa Rica [1984] IACtHR oc -4/84, Series A No. 4 (1984) para 35.

Yean and Bosico (n 28) paras 136–137.

Opinion of Advocate General Maduro in Case C-135/08 (Rottman) [2009] cjeu c -135/08 para 17.

See also Mantu (n 3) 5.

See on the external and internal aspect of citizenship Shaw, The People in Question (n 3) 4.

See Farahat (n 19) 53 f; Mantu (n 3) 2. See, however, for the discussion of the limits of the domaine réservé of states in nationality matters under international law Chapter 3, ii .

Farahat (n 19) 54; de Groot and Vonk (n 8) 35; Kay Hailbronner, ‘Rights and Duties of Dual Nationals: Changing Concepts and Attitudes’ in David A Martin and Kay Hailbronner (eds), Rights and Duties of Dual Nationals: Evolution and Prospects (Kluwer Law International 2003) 20; Makarov (n 36) 30. Arguing for a more substantive understanding of nationality, Vlieks, Hirsch Ballin and Recalde-Vela (n 34) 164.

Research in International Law of the Harvard Law School, ‘The Law of Nationality’ (1929) 23 American Journal of International Law 21.

Bauböck, ‘Genuine Links and Useful Passports’ (n 57) 3.

See Gunnar G Schram, ‘Article 15 udhr ’ in Asbjørn Eide and others (eds), The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Commentary (Scandinavian University Press 1992) 229. See also Farahat (n 19) 54 f; Mantu (n 3) 6; Weis, Nationality in International Law (n 9) 29.

See also Makarov (n 36) 17.

Malcolm N Shaw, International Law (6th ed, Cambridge University Press 2008) 659; Vlieks, Hirsch Ballin and Recalde-Vela (n 34) 165. See also Chapter 3, i .1 .

Fripp (n 8) 22.

Kristine Kruma, EU Citizenship, Nationality and Migrant Status: An Ongoing Challenge (Martinus Nijhoff 2014) 31.

Bloom, Noncitizenism (n 80) 11.

Mantu (n 3) 15.

See also Jeffrey Blackman, ‘State Successions and Statelessness: The Emerging Right to an Effective Nationality Under International Law’ (1998) 19 Michigan Journal of International Law 1141, 1151. See in more detail Chapter 3, ii .

Mantu (n 3) 12.

de Groot and Vonk (n 8) 50.

Iseult Honohan and Nathalie Rougier, ‘Global Birthright Citizenship Laws: How Inclusive?’ (2018) 65 Netherlands International Law Review 337, 338.

See for an overview on use of jus soli and jus sanguinis for birthright citizenship acquisition in Global Citizenship Observatory ( globalcit ), ‘Global Birthright Indicators, Version 3.0’ (Global Citizenship Observatory ( globalcit ) 2017) < https://public.tableau.com/profile/lorenzo3504# !/vizhome/Globalbirthrightindicators/Globalbirthrightindicators>. The Vatican State is the only state which does not grant citizenship on the basis of birth or descent, but based on residence and office or service with the Vatican, see Hailbronner and others (n 14) 46.

de Groot and Vonk (n 8) 51.

Honohan and Rougier (n 119) 340. For the database see Global Citizenship Observatory ( globalcit ), ‘Global Database on Modes of Acquisition of Citizenship, Version 1.0’ ( globalcit 2017) < https://globalcit.eu/modes-acquisition-citizenship/ >.

Honohan and Rougier (n 119) 340. See for a historical perspective the analysis made in the Harvard Law Research of 1929, Research in International Law of the Harvard Law School (n 107) 29.

Hailbronner and others (n 14) 46; Honohan and Rougier (n 119) 340.

Hailbronner and others (n 14) 46. See also Peter J Spiro, ‘Citizenship, Nationality, and Statelessness’ in Vincent Chetail and Céline Bauloz (eds), Research Handbook on International Law and Migration (Edward Elgar Publishing 2014) 282; Weis, Nationality in International Law (n 9) 95 f.

See eg Article 20(2) achr and Article 6(4) acc as well as Human Rights Committee, ‘General Comment No. 17: Article 24 (Rights of the Child)’ (HRCttee 1989) UN Doc. ccpr/c /21/Rev.1/Add.9 para 8. Article 6 ecn addresses both acquisition of nationality based on descent as well as of birth in the territory. See also Adjami and Harrington (n 3) 105; Carol A Batchelor, ‘Statelessness and the Problem of Resolving Nationality Status’ (1998) 10 International Journal of Refugee Law 156, 169; Laura van Waas, Nationality Matters: Statelessness under International Law (Intersentia 2008) 58 ff.

Shachar, The Birthright Lottery (n 94) 121.

Rainer Bauböck, ‘Democratic Inclusion. A Pluralistic Theory of Citizenship’ in Rainer Bauböck (ed), Democratic Inclusion (Manchester University Press 2018) 70.

See ibid 68.

Honohan and Rougier (n 119) 340.

de Groot and Vonk (n 8) 50. Adoption is deemed equivalent to birth.

Weis, Nationality in International Law (n 9) 99.

Global Citizenship Observatory ( globalcit ), ‘Database Acquisition of Citizenship’ (n 122). No provisions on naturalization are found in the legislations of Lebanon, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Moreover, in many states in the Middle East naturalization is theoretically possible but in practice remains largely unachievable as the requirements are so restrictive, see Zahra Albarazi, ‘Regional Report on Citizenship: The Middle East and North Africa (MENA)’ (Global Citizenship Observatory ( globalcit ) 2017) globalcit Comparative Report 2017/3 < http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/50046/RSCAS_GLOBALCIT_Comp_2017_03.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y >.

de Groot and Vonk (n 8) 60. See also Chapter 5, iii .3.6 .

In case of facilitated naturalization, the criteria generally are reduced but not lifted entirely.

See also de Groot and Vonk (n 8) 60 f.

See on exclusionary effects of naturalization tests van Oers (n 94).

de Groot and Vonk (n 8) 64.

See also Eva Ersbøll, ‘Nationality and Identity Issues — A Danish Perspective Special Issue: EU Citizenship: Twenty Years on: Part ii : Legal Citizenship in the EU and Its Frontiers’ (2014) 15 German Law Journal 835, 836.

See in more detail below Chapter 6, ii .2.1 . See also Barbara von Rütte, ‘Social Identity and the Right to Belong — The ECtHR’s Judgment in Hoti v Croatia’ (2019) 24 Tilburg Law Review 147.

Genovese v Malta (n 30) para 33.

UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, ‘Report on Racial Discrimination in the Context of in the Context of Laws, Policies and Practices Concerning Citizenship, Nationality and Immigration’ (Special Rapporteur on Racism 2018) UN Doc. a/hrc /38/52 para 7.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt 1973) 296. See in more detail Chapter 2, iii .2.1 .

Katja Swider and Caia Vlieks, ‘Learning from Naturalisation Debates: The Right to an Appropriate Citizenship at Birth’ in Rainer Bauböck (ed), Debating Transformations of National Citizenship (Springer International Publishing 2018) 149.

Bloemraad and Sheares (n 89) 841.

Gibney, ‘Statelessness and Citizenship’ (n 3) 51. See also Hirsch Ballin (n 3) 141.

Kingston (n 80) 5.

See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (2nd edn, University of Chicago Press 1958); Bosniak, ‘Citizenship Denationalized’ (n 69) 470 ff.

See Bosniak, ‘Citizenship Denationalized’ (n 69) 465.

See eg Elspeth Guild, The Legal Elements of European Identity: EU Citizenship and Migration Law (Kluwer Law International 2004) 8.

Weis, Nationality in International Law (n 9) 33.

See Nottebohm (n 1) 24.

Annemarieke Vermeer-Künzli, ‘Nationality and Diplomatic Protection, A Reappraisal’ in Alessandra Annoni and Serena Forlati (eds), The Changing Role of Nationality in International Law (Routledge 2013) 76. See also Article 1 International Law Commission Draft Articles on Diplomatic Protection, 2006, Supplement No. 10, UN Doc. A/61/10 (‘ILC Draft Articles on Diplomatic Protection’).

See on the discussion sparked by the icj ’s judgment in the Nottebohm case on the question whether nationality has to be effective for the exercise of diplomatic protection Alice Edwards, ‘The Meaning of Nationality in International Law in an Era of Human Rights, Procedural and Substantive Aspects’ in Alice Edwards and Laura van Waas (eds), Nationality and Statelessness under International Law (Cambridge University Press 2014) 32; Alexander N Makarov, ‘Das Urteil des Internationalen Gerichtshofes im Fall Nottebohm’ (1955) 16 Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht 407; Robert D Sloane, ‘Breaking the Genuine Link: The Contemporary International Legal Regulation of Nationality’ (2009) 50 Harvard International Law Journal 8; Peter J Spiro, ‘Nottebohm and “Genuine Link”: Anatomy of a Jurisprudential Illusion’ (2019) Investment Migration Working Paper No 2019/1 < https://investmentmigration.org/download/nottebohm-genuine-link-anatomy-jurisprudential-illusion-imc-rp-2019-1/ >; Vermeer-Künzli (n 154) 77.

Panevezys-Saldutiskis Railway (Estonia v Lithuania) [1939] pcij Series a./b . No. 76 para 65.

Article 8 ilc Draft Articles on Diplomatic Protection (n 154). The Commentary to the Draft Articles describes Article 8 as ‘an exercise in progressive development of the law’, International Law Commission, ‘Commentary on the Draft Articles on Diplomatic Protection’ ( ilc 2006) Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 2006, Vol. ii , Part Two 36. See also Andreas Kind, Der diplomatische Schutz: Zwischenstaatlicher Rechtsdurchsetzungsmechanismus im Spannungsfeld von Individualrechten, Ausseninteressen, Staatsangehörigkeit und Schutzpflichten: Eine schweizerische Perspektive (Dike Verlag Zürich 2014) 116 ff; Vermeer-Künzli (n 154) 76.

Rudan (n 11) 117. See on the implications of the exclusion of non-citizens from political rights for democracy below Chapter 6, i .2 .

Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (n 144) 296.

See by contrast Linda Bosniak, ‘Status Non-Citizens’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press 2017) 328 ff.

Susanne Baer, ‘Politische Rechte’ in Arnd Pollmann and Georg Lohmann (eds), Menschenrechte: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch (Metzler 2012) 257.

Human Rights Committee, ‘General Comment No. 25: The Right to Participate in Public Affairs, Voting Rights and the Right of Equal Access to Public Service (Art. 25)’ (HRCttee 1996) UN Doc. ccpr/c /21/Rev.1/Add.7 para 12. See also Walter Kälin and Jörg Künzli, Universeller Menschenrechtsschutz: der Schutz des Individuums auf globaler und regionaler Ebene (4. Aufl., Helbing Lichtenhahn Verlag 2019) 582 ff.

Kälin and Künzli, Menschenrechtsschutz (n 162) 607. Interesting is, however, Article 21 UDHR which grants ‘everyone’ the right to take part in the government of ‘his’ country, see also Zilbershats (n 3) 59.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 16 December 1966, 999 unts 171 (‘ iccpr ’).

Similar provisions can be found in other instruments, such as Article 5(c) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (21 December 1965, 660 unts 195, ‘ cerd ’), Article 7(f) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (18 December 1979, 1249 unts 13, ‘ cedaw ’) and Article 29 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as well as at the regional level Article 23 achr or Article 13 achpr .

Human Rights Committee, ‘General Comment No. 15: The Position of Aliens Under the Covenant’ (HRCttee 1986) para 7. Article 16 echr which allows imposing restrictions on the political activity of non-citizens is considered to be outdated and is not normally applied by the ECtHR, see Kälin and Künzli, Menschenrechtsschutz (n 162) 590. See however with regard to the argument that a loyalty requirement for the purposes of naturalization restricts the rights to freedom of expression and of assembly Petropavlovskis v Latvia (n 30).

Dan Ferris and others, ‘Noncitizen Voting Rights in the Global Era: A Literature Review and Analysis’ (2020) 21 Journal of International Migration and Integration 949. The question of political participation of resident non-citizens is discussed in a large body of academic literature. See among many Jean-Thomas Arrighi and Rainer Bauböck, ‘A Multilevel Puzzle: Migrants’ Voting Rights in National and Local Elections’ (2017) 56 European Journal of Political Research 619; Rainer Bauböck, ‘Stakeholder Citizenship and Transnational Political Participation: A Normative Evaluation of External Voting’ (2006) 75 Fordham Law Review 2393; Julie Fraser, ‘Inclusive Democracy: Franchise Limitations on Non-Resident Citizens as an Unjust Restriction of Rights under the European Convention on Human Rights’ (2017) 33 Utrecht Journal of International and European Law; Andrea de Guttry, ‘The Right of Aliens to Vote and to Carry Out Political Activities: A Critical Analysis of the Relevant International Obligations Incumbent on the State of Origin and on the Host State’ [2018] Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht 933; Richard Lappin, ‘The Right to Vote for Non-Resident Citizens in Europe’ (2016) 65 International and Comparative Law Quarterly 859; David Owen, ‘Transnational Citizenship and the Democratic State: Modes of Membership and Voting Rights’ (2011) 14 Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 641; Luicy Pedroza, Citizenship Beyond Nationality: Immigrant’s Right to Vote Across the World (University of Pennsylvania Press 2019); Cristina M Rodríguez, ‘Noncitizen Voting and the Extraconstitutional Construction of the Polity’ (2010) 8 International Journal of Constitutional Law 30; Ruth Rubio-Marín, ‘Transnational Politics and the Democratic Nation-State: Normative Challenges of Expatriate Voting and Nationality Retention of Emigrants’ (2006) 81 New York University Law Review 117; Ziegler (n 98).

pace , ‘Recommendation 1500 (2001)’ (n 27).

See for a limitation of political rights of dual citizens Tănase v Moldova [2010] ECtHR Application No. 7/08.

See also Guild, The Legal Elements of European Identity (n 151) 8; R (on the application of Johnson) (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) [2016] UK Supreme Court [2016] uksc 56 para 33.

For example, the right to one’s own country under Article 12(4) iccpr (see Chapter 6, ii .2.2 ) but also the principle of non-refoulement .

See on the right to freedom of movement in a migration context also Richard Perruchoud, ‘State Sovereignty and Freedom of Movement’ in Brian Opeskin, Richard Perruchoud and Jillyanne Redpath-Cross (eds), Foundations of International Migration Law (Cambridge University Press 2012).

Üner v The Netherlands [2006] ECtHR Application No. 46410/99 para 54.

Bosniak, ‘Status Non-Citizens’ (n 160) 327. See on the exclusionary effect of citizenship also below Chapter 6, i .3 .

Protocol No. 4 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, securing certain rights and freedoms other than those already included in the Convention and in the first Protocol thereto, 16 September 1963, ets No. 046 (‘Protocol No. 4’).

Owen, ‘The Right to Have Nationality Rights’ (n 3) 303.

Guild, The Legal Elements of European Identity (n 151) 17.

See also Bosniak, ‘Status Non-Citizens’ (n 160) 327.

See Chapter 6, i .3 .

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, ‘General Recommendation No. xxx on Discrimination Against Non-Citizens’ (CtteeERD 2002) para 15.

Thus, arguments for more inclusive citizenship regimes contain a risk of increasing the exclusionary tendencies of citizenship and shifting the pressure to the territorial border and the question of access to a state. However, while I consider both forms of exclusion to be problematic, I focus here on the question of access to citizenship and leave the question of access to the territory aside. See on the right to immigration eg Joseph Carens, The Ethics of Immigration (Oxford University Press 2013); Andreas Cassee, ‘Das Recht auf globale Bewegungsfreiheit: Eine Verteidigung’ (2014) 141 Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosphie, Beihefte 55; Martino Mona, Das Recht auf Immigration: rechtsphilosophische Begründung eines originären Rechts auf Einwanderung im liberalen Staat (Helbing Lichtenhahn 2007).

See on the relationship of citizenship and human rights David Owen, ‘Citizenship and Human Rights’ in Ayelet Shachar and others (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (2017). See further Paulina Tambakaki, Human Rights or Citizenship? (Birkbeck Law 2010).

Carol A Batchelor, ‘Developments in International Law: The Avoidance of Statelessness Through Positive Application of the Right to a Nationality’ in Council of Europe (ed), Trends and Developments in National and International Law on Nationality, Proceedings of the 1st European Conference on Nationality (Council of Europe 1999) 52.

See on the relationship of citizenship and human rights Owen, ‘Citizenship and Human Rights’ (n 182). See further Tambakaki (n 182).

See Elspeth Guild, ‘The UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration: What Place for Human Rights?’ (2018) 30 International Journal of Refugee Law 661, 662; Hirsch Ballin (n 3) 141; Kesby (n 35) 52.

Adjami and Harrington (n 3) 94; Barker (n 76) 242 ff; Sara Kalm, ‘Citizenship Capital’ (2020) 34 Global Society 528. See already Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (n 144) 292.

See also Michelle Foster and Timnah Rachel Baker, ‘Racial Discrimination in Nationality Laws: A Doctrinal Blind Spot of International Law?’ (2021) 11 Columbia Journal of Race and Law 83, 104.

Stephen Hall, ‘The European Convention on Nationality and the Right to Have Rights’ (1999) 24 European Law Review 586, 588.

Gibney, ‘Statelessness and Citizenship’ (n 3) 51.

Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, When Humans Become Migrants: Study of the European Court of Human Rights with an Inter-American Counterpoint (Oxford University Press 2015) 119.

See also Jo Shaw and Igor Stiks, ‘Introduction: What Do We Talk about When We Talk about Citizenship Rights?’ in Jo Shaw and Igor Stiks (eds), Citizenship Rights (Ashgate 2013) xix.

Article 1(1) css .

Bloom, Noncitizenism (n 80) 49. See also Gibney, ‘Statelessness and Citizenship’ (n 3) 47. See also UN Independent Expert on Minority Issues, ‘Report on Minorities and the Discriminatory Denial or Deprivation of Citizenship’.

Secretary of State for the Home Department v Al-Jedda [2013] UK Supreme Court [2013] uksc 62 para 12.

Gibney, ‘Statelessness and Citizenship’ (n 3) 45; Tamás Molnár, ‘The Prohibition of Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality under International Law and EU Law: New Perspectives’ [2014] Hungarian Yearbook of International Law and European Law 67; van Waas, Nationality Matters (n 126) 9.

Though there may be valid theoretical arguments that nationality is not per se good and that acquiring a(ny) nationality is not always in the interest of stateless persons. See Swider, ‘Rights-Based Approach to Statelessness’ (n 3) 10; see also Katja Swider, ‘Why End Statelessness?’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds), End Statelessness? (Routledge 2017). See also Bloom who points out that the imposition of citizenship cannot be seen as emancipatory only, Bloom, Noncitizenism (n 80) 88.

Dembour, When Humans Become Migrants (n 190) 30. See also Kalm (n 186) 202.

Shachar, The Birthright Lottery (n 94).

See also Owen, ‘Citizenship and Human Rights’ (n 182) 248.

I am aware that this categorization is simplistic and that there is a large debate about the conceptualization of human rights as moral or legal rights, see eg Aaron Fellmeth, Paradigms of International Human Rights Law (Oxford University Press 2016). See for a similar categorization Samantha Besson, ‘The European Union and Human Rights: Towards A Post-National Human Rights Institution?’ (2006) 6 Human Rights Law Review 329 ff.

See Kerstin von der Decken and Nikolaus Koch, ‘Recognition of New Human Rights: Phases, Techniques and the Approach of “Differentiated Traditionalism”’ in Andreas von Arnauld, Kerstin von der Decken and Mart Susi (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of New Human Rights (1st edn, Cambridge University Press 2020) 7; Anne Peters, Beyond Human Rights: The Legal Status of the Individual in International Law (Cambridge University Press 2016) 441. See in more detail below Chapter 2, iii .3 .

Fellmeth (n 200) 3.

Fundamental rights of individuals against the state in domestic law are usually referred to as constitutional fundamental rights, rather than human rights, see similarly Peters, Beyond Human Rights (n 201) 440.

The positions summarized are those found to be most pertinent for the subsequent discussion of the right to citizenship in international human rights law. However, others have developed similar arguments for a moral or political right to citizenship, eg Rainer Bauböck, Transnational Citizenship, Membership and Rights in International Migration (Edward Elgar Publishing 1994); Bauböck, ‘Democratic Inclusion’ (n 129); Bauböck and Paskalev (n 66); Hirsch Ballin (n 3); Kostakopoulou (n 19).

Joppke, ‘Instrumental Turn’ (n 51).

Soysal (n 73). See also Bosniak who argues that the rights of non-citizens — “alien citizenship” — should continuously approximate the rights and status of citizens in order to avoid the exclusionary side of citizenship, and does not argue directly for a right to citizenship, Bosniak, Citizen and Alien (n 50).

Soysal (n 73) 159.

Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (n 144). See for a thorough analysis Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others, Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (5th printing, Cambridge University Press 2007) 49 ff; Kesby (n 35).

Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (n 144) 296 f. See on the notion of ‘the right to have rights’ in the Arendtian sense Ayten Gündogdu, Rightlessness in an Age of Rights (Oxford University Press 2015); Kesby (n 35).

Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (n 144) 291 f.

See Gündogdu (n 210).

Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (n 144) 295. See also Gündogdu (n 210).

See Owen, ‘The Right to Have Nationality Rights’ (n 3) 299 f.

See also Manuela Sissy Kraus, Menschenrechtliche Aspekte der Staatenlosigkeit (Pro-Universitate-Verlag 2013) 120.

Benhabib (n 209) 50.

See also Kesby (n 35) 3; Mantu (n 3) 10.

Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism (n 144) 298.

Owen, ‘The Right to Have Nationality Rights’ (n 3) 300.

Kesby (n 35) 3.

Gibney, ‘Statelessness and Citizenship’ (n 3) 51. See also Brad K Blitz, ‘The State and the Stateless. The Legacy of Hannah Arendt Reconsidered’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds), End Statelessness? (Routledge 2017).

Kesby (n 35) 4.

Similarly also Owen, ‘The Right to Have Nationality Rights’ (n 3) 300.

Benhabib (n 209) 3.

ibid 136. See also Kraus (n 215) 141.

Benhabib (n 209) 139.

See also Farahat (n 19) 124 ff.

Rubio-Marín, Immigration as a Democratic Challenge (n 3).

See also Matias (n 39) 208 ff.

Rubio-Marín, Immigration as a Democratic Challenge (n 3) 4.

ibid 21 ff.

See ibid 81 ff.

ibid 60 ff.

ibid 20 f and 99 ff.

ibid 127 f.

Carens (n 181).

He thereby draws on Rubio-Marín’s categories, see ibid 50 n 5.

ibid 53 ff.

ibid 165. See on the principle of jus nexi in more detail Chapter 6, ii .

ibid 164 f.

Owen, ‘The Right to Have Nationality Rights’ (n 3) 301.

Owen, ‘Citizenship and Human Rights’ (n 182) 252. See for an account that is more critical of the possible implications of recognizing nationality as a human right Kesby (n 35) 39 ff.

As Besson points out, not all moral rights are equally recognized as legal rights, (n 200) 334.

Vlieks, Hirsch Ballin and Recalde-Vela (n 34) 162.

Walter Kälin and Jörg Künzli, The Law of International Human Rights Protection (2nd ed, Oxford University Press 2019) 29.

UN General Assembly, ‘Resolution 41/120: Setting International Standards in the Field of Human Rights’ (UN General Assembly 1987) para 4 < http://digitallibrary.un.org/record/126473 >.

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Spring 2024

T.H. Marshall’s “Citizenship and Social Class”

An old conservative-minded contention goes something like this: if you start with an egalitarian ethos, you will bottom out at complete leveling. It’s a slippery slope to the end of individuality.

This was not simply a social or economic claim. Once upon a time, especially in Europe, this attitude stymied equality before the law, a liberal norm most of us would now take for granted. Once upon another time, it was used also to forestall universal suffrage, now a democratic norm in any decent political order.

Foes—at least many early ones—of equality before the law or universal suffrage supposed that a society ought to be governed by natural aristocracy. This later became meritocracy for many of them. Surely, this marked considerable improvement, yet meritocracy was often conceived narrowly, with little consideration of how unearned social advantages or disadvantages shape the life chances of most people.

Let me pose this in a way that is not original yet is, I think, revealing. Imagine two girls, both age five, with pneumonia. One, the daughter of well-off parents, lives in a well-to-do neighborhood. The other, daughter of a poorly or modestly paid working family, lives in an outer borough. We can guess who will receive better medical care. But why should the first girl receive better medical attention than the second? Does she “merit” it more than her counterpart does? But how can she if you must do something in order to merit something else? Neither girl can be said to merit her mother and father—or to have chosen them. Parents, whether good or bad, rich or poor, do not, after all, issue from a child’s “free choice” any more than, say, her IQ. Should both girls be told to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or should both simply have access to equally good care?

And what, then, of their possibilities for schooling? No, that is not a leap from one matter to another. There is—I borrow from philosopher John Rawls and his followers—a kind of birth lottery with enormous, unavoidable social consequences. Unavoidable? Not exactly. The two girls may not have chosen their parents, but the society into which they are born is, like all societies, a matter of many human choices. Priorities are set by them, and these embody or are shaped by a range of values; they can be sustained or changed politically.

For instance, a government led by the British Labour Party instituted a National Health Service after the Second World War. This transformed the citizenry’s access to medical care by making care a social right. For another, more recent example, Democrats recently legislated important if more narrow reform of the American health system. This came over objections of a Republican minority that hoped to impose its own priorities; and some conservative politicians and pundits warned how this—really every—social reform encumbers “free choice” and skids toward nothing less than totalitarianism.

But why this prelude to address the essay in the title of this article, “Citizenship and Social Class,” by British sociologist T.H. Marshall (1893–1981)? Consider the conceptual terrain touched so far: civil citizenship (particularly the ideas of equality before the law and individual rights), political citizenship (particularly universal suffrage), and social citizenship (the notion that all members of a polity ought to enjoy and to share at least a basic level of social-economic and cultural well-being).

Think now of the institutions and some of the rights linked to each dimension of citizenship: courts (to secure civil liberties); elections to a legislature (political rights); welfare systems (public education and health care). In fact, we’ve arrived at Marshall’s principle concerns in “Citizenship and Social Class.” These concerns were presented with Britain in mind, first as a lecture in 1949 and then in published form in 1950 by this professor at the London School of Economics. The context is evident: the postwar creation of a British welfare state. But the issues and principles entailed have much to say to Americans too. After all, our right wing regularly proclaims its swaggering patriotism while looking askance at social responsibility for fellow citizens—members of their own political community. Why pay a little more in taxes, say for health care and education, when you can wave a tri-cornered hat and a flag?

Marshall spoke of the development of civil, political, and social citizenship as an evolutionary sequence. The rights embodied in the first pointed to those of the second, and the second to the third. Each, in succession, was secured over the three centuries following the 1688 Revolution (when constitutional monarchy was established). Some scholars challenge dimensions of Marshall’s progression. I won’t dwell on these debates, in part because I am not a historian of Britain, and in part because my primary concerns here are the social democratic implications of his argument.

Those social democratic implications derive from Marshall’s proposition that the very concept of modern citizenship is at odds with unmerited inequalities and should be deployed to abate them. Citizenship, he explained, is a “status bestowed on all those who are full members of a community.” Those members share rights, duties, and the protections of a common law. The bonds of modern citizenship grow among them first through the “struggle to win those rights,” and then, once gained, by their “enjoyment.” And so, modern citizenship is born also of “loyalty to a civilization which is a common possession.”

Common . Marshall assumes that people are not simply egos batting about in artificially framed spaces that they happen to call nations or states. There is such a thing as “society”; the social individuals who make it up ought to share a basic notion—and system—of fairness rooted in mutuality. The kind of market fundamentalism that was rehabilitated closer to our times (in the Thatcher-Reagan era) is obviously at odds with this way of thinking.

This thinking does not entail a simplistic negation of the positive accomplishments of classical European liberalism, with its stress on individualism and markets; it does propose that modern citizenship, as a status held by all, expands the domains of equality at the expense of social class, with its vestiges of a pre-modern hierarchy of privileged estates. The persistent enrichment of citizenship rights, thought Marshall, ought to render important powers associated with social differences increasingly less powerful. (This has been challenged from the Left on the grounds that economic inequalities too easily, even inevitably, translate into undue political influence.)

But let’s follow Marshall’s presentation in a little more detail.

Civil Citizenship came first and consolidated the rule of law and equality before the law. Its rights are those “necessary to individual freedom—liberty of the person, freedom of thought, speech and faith, the right to own property and to conclude valid contracts and the right to justice.” Individual civil rights also undid statutes and customs that constricted the “right to work”; working people could now, in principle, move about legally in pursuit of employment. It is a right that also corresponded to the need of capitalism for labor markets.

“Citizenship” and “freedom,” at least individual freedom, appear to have become interchangeable terms, Marshall noted. Yet there is an obvious problem. If you accept equality before the law, must you not also accept equality in choosing lawmakers? In other words, the principle of civil citizenship contains within itself what Marshall calls a “drive” toward further equality—political equality. The logic of civil rights subverts the idea that political rights should be restricted on account of social class.

Political Citizenship progresses in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Reform of 1832, by which Parliament expanded in a limited way an already very limited franchise, was the “first infantile attempt” by political rights “to walk.” Steps, then strides, led eventually to universal suffrage. Political rights caught up with civil rights by means of more reforms. The right to vote came to working people and to women. Alongside these developments, a labor movement grew and a Labour Party went into Parliament.

The results of this trajectory are uncontroversial by the standards of liberal democracy. The same is not so for Marshall’s next move, which was to assert that social rights must follow from political and civil ones.

Social Citizenship encompasses a “whole range” of rights, says Marshall, from “a modicum of welfare and security to the right to share to the full in the social heritage and live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in society.” These rights find their institutional home in what, with some variation, has now been characterized as a welfare state. (The term in English seems to have originated with Archbishop William Temple, who meant it to contrast with the “warfare states” of the Second World War.) Social rights mitigate inequalities generated by market economies without abolishing markets.

Here, again, one principle implies another: if every citizen is equal before the law and should therefore be able to choose those who make laws, shouldn’t every citizen also be equipped, knowledgeable, and secure enough to enjoy her or his civil and political rights and fulfill responsibilities that come with them? If yes, then decent education and living conditions must be aspects of citizenship. Without education, a citizen cannot make intelligent choices at the ballot box, and an uneducated citizenry also cannot sustain a minimally sophisticated economy. An educated citizen will be better able to exercise a civil right such as free speech. And so we begin to perceive that social citizenship does not quash individuality, but together with the other aspects of citizenship, fortifies the foundations on which it may flourish democratically; it enables individual citizens to fare well.

HOW SHALL we think about Marshall’s claims sixty years after they were made? One thing to note is that the “slippery slope” argument against thinkers like Marshall is obviously tendentious. Whatever the problems or weaknesses or costs of welfare states, whatever the difficulties in finding equilibrium between political community and markets, or between the state and civil society, or between public initiative and private innovation, this is evident: social citizenship did not abolish political citizenship in liberal democracies. Political citizenship did not extinguish civil citizenship. Think of the American parallels. Did Social Security and the New Deal bring Stalinism to the United States, as trembling conservative voices warned it would? Did Medicare bring totalitarianism and destroy our liberties? Or better health care for older people?

Note, then, that the egalitarian drive of citizenship does not “make everyone the same.” It can, Marshall points out, even increase economic inequalities. If health services are available to all citizens as a social right, members of better-off classes will find their disposable income increased; they can spend in other ways fees they once paid private doctors. “The advantages obtained by having a larger money income do not disappear,” remarked Marshall, but they are limited to consumption. This means that powers derived from economic disparities are undercut. (Again, critics on Marshall’s left would question the political efficacy of this claim.) Neither would markets disappear, but social logic complementary to Marshall’s would suggest that they be regarded as means rather than ends.

Critics from the Right often insist that expenditures on social citizenship are inevitably too costly. This claim seems to me to slope in another slippery, and dangerous, direction. What if someone claimed that fair court systems (and thus civil rights) were becoming “too expensive”? He or she would—quite justly—be treated with scorn. There are, however, untoward occasions when civil liberties are temporarily compromised to a degree in a liberal democratic society—wartime, for instance. So these rights are not always considered absolute. Concessions are demanded occasionally in less exacting circumstances too—if, say, one legitimate civil liberty conflicts with another legitimate civil liberty. It might well be that a free press has to be restricted sometimes in some degree to guarantee that an individual has a fair jury trial.* But these examples differ qualitatively from calculations based on nothing but financial cost.

MARSHALL’S CASE, finally, is that each of the three aspects of citizenship can—indeed should—bolster the others in a decent society. Each may modify the others, but they don’t pile atop or fuse with each other. If they did, the distinct concerns of their specific domains—civil, political, social—would dissolve. Guaranteeing freedom of conscience is not the same as guaranteeing a fair vote or making sure that a sick five-year-old member of your political community gets proper attention (or ensuring that her family will not be ruined financially to obtain it for her).

The point is not to be blithe about expenditures on social citizenship; they are real—as real as, say, taxes. But I do mean to suggest the need for moral wariness, indeed unease, when financial claims are advanced simplistically against the basics of social citizenship. After all, why should a citizenry be any less derisive of the idea that costs should curtail civil liberties than of the idea that social rights—say, those of our five-year-old—are too costly? Nonetheless, a weakness in Marshall’s essay, concerned as it is to show how rights progress from other rights, is its insufficient consideration of conflicts among rights.

If conflicts like these arise, then the worldview of those who grapple with them becomes an urgent matter. Will it be public servants who fret greatly, are even sleepless about such tradeoffs? Or will they be like those (on the Right) who imagine that they have an all-solving paradigm in “The Market”? Or like those (on the hard Left) who care little about civil and political rights because they possess the “scientific” plan for the end of days (rendering “bourgeois” rights uninteresting, even for socially disadvantaged people who might be struggling for social rights).

WHERE SHALL we place Marshall’s essay in the intellectual history of the Left? Most obviously his arguments have their lineage in a tradition associated with late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century English “lib-labism.” This reformism looked to reconciliations between liberal and labor-oriented (or socialist) ideas, and it contrasts to Marxism and its offshoots. Marshall’s argument is best situated in a space—call it indeterminate or open-ended—between a liberalized socialism and a socialized liberalism, and this is, I think, as useful a location of “social democratic” thinking as can be found. It points to the vigorous concern for both liberty and equality that marks an intelligent Left for today—a Left that has learned from disasters done in its own name in the twentieth century and that conceives itself as heir to what was best or most useful in liberalism, rather than as its destroyer.

Marshall’s approach must be marked off in at least one additional way in our uncertain age of globalization. Marx proposed that the urban, industrial proletariat was the “universal class” of history—its interests those of humanity, its members foreseen to be the overwhelming preponderance of the world’s population. Nations, Marx imagined, would dissolve as capitalism propelled itself worldwide, class struggle intensified, and revolution brought a utopian future free of states and classes.

In contrast, “revisionists,” even the Marxist kind like Eduard Bernstein at the end of the nineteenth century, were skeptical of this prognosis. They doubted that social classes would relentlessly and simply bifurcate, yielding a reactionary minority and a radicalized, homogeneous majority. Some “orthodox” Marxists, especially in Leninist and Trotskyist mutations, later found a substitute for their vision of the proletariat in fantasies of the third world. Because orthodoxy is, well, orthodoxy, their dogma remained intact even if its historical protagonist changed.

In contrast, “revisionists” looked to the extension of democracy and reform to address social suffering, especially that of workers. Seen in this light, Marshall’s essay effectively turns Marxism on its head by making citizenship rather than a class into the universalizing medium. In fact, he presumes a national context. The state is, in his essay, an expanding vehicle for rights and self-government, and “[T]he social health of a society depends upon the civilization of its members.”

The state has undergone considerable transformations since Marshall wrote his essay. Those whom the birth lottery has placed in the twenty-first century are in circumstances that differ from his in various ways. Among other things, a government’s room to maneuver is narrower due to diverse processes such as “globalization” and “regionalization” (“Europeanization” is one example). When Marshall wrote of the “civilization” of a citizenry, he thought mostly of his own; it was decades before immigration and multiculturalism posed new questions about what citizens hold—or should hold—in common. (This ought also to make us think about the fact that it is a birth lottery that gives most people automatic citizenship in this or that country.)

Challenges are also raised by these same processes to democracy itself; might it not weaken increasingly if political parties run for office advocating a set of policies but, on winning, lack sufficient fiscal tools to implement them? Social democracy’s most important achievements in the twentieth century required the framework of a national state, one which also functioned as a kind of mediator between citizens and the world.

Some contemporary thinkers offer concepts of “global” or “cosmopolitan” citizenship in response to changes of the last decades. These are often as appealing as they are abstract. It is difficult to imagine, however, that they can take meaningful, practical form—especially if we value self-government and are concerned to secure civil, political, and social rights. It is also with these in mind that we ought to reread and reconsider—and still value—T.H. Marshall’s short, elegant classic.

Mitchell Cohen is professor of political science at Bernard Baruch College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He was co-editor of Dissent from 1991 to 2009 and will be CUNY Writing Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2010–2011. This article appears in slightly different form in a series on “The Classics of Social Democratic Thought,” published by Policy Network, a London think tank, and available at www.policy-network.net.

*Again, I expropriate some notions from Rawls’s A Theory of Justice . Rawls advocated what he called “property-owning democracy” rather than a welfare state and would have had some differences with Marshall.

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1 (page 1) p. 1 What is citizenship, and why does it matter?

• Published: September 2008
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The issue of citizenship is currently topical. Governments have promoted teaching it in schools and immigrants are expected to pass citizenship tests to become naturalized citizens. Citizenship is frequently touted as the solution to a country's ills. ‘What is citizenship, and why does it matter?’ looks at the range and variety of uses of citizenship and the relationship between citizenship and political participation in a democratic society. Over time, the nature of the democratic political community and the qualities needed to be a citizen have changed. Why is citizenship important? What exactly does it mean? What challenges does the notion of citizenship face for the future?

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