Thesis--Utrecht. / Vita. Foreword and summary in Dutch. Includes indexes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-193).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Breslau.

Thesis advisor: James F. Keenan / Thesis advisor: Daniel J. Daly / Nigeria is a huge and highly diverse country. It comprises an agglomeration of hundreds of precolonial nations, called “tribes” by the British colonizers. Since its independence in 1960, Nigerian State has been struggling with the question of citizenship; who is a Nigerian or who can be a Nigerian. Over these years, it has preserved an exclusive notion of citizenship where right to citizenship is intimately tied to membership of an “indigenous” community recognized by the state. This has set up boundaries between groups regarded as ‘autochthones' and 'immigrants', ‘first-comer and late-comer’, 'natives' and 'strangers’, ‘indigene’ and ‘settler’. Lacking a robust legal scaffolding, Nigeria’s system of citizenship has evolved organically to depend on authentication by local government authorities rather than a federal agency. As such, the right to be Nigerian is epitomized by a certificate of indigeneity, a nebulous system manipulated by politicians, traditional rulers and state officials. Today, such a system of citizenship has condemned different groups to the pains and agony of de facto statelessness. These groups include but are not limited to minority ethnic groups, internal migrants, internally displaced persons and refugees. In the light of the above, this thesis offers sustained ethical analysis of the oppressive structures of statelessness in Nigeria using the hermeneutical lens of human rights. Its main argument is that the lack of recognition of the citizenship rights of certain individuals or groups in Nigeria because of their ethnicity, religion or migratory history renders them stateless, constituting a grave injustice that can only be remedied through an ethic of recognition. This ethic takes the form of a set of proposals for Churches in Nigeria and the government. firstly, it articulates vigilance, humility and solidarity as necessary virtues for Churches in Nigeria to develop in order to be more capacious in responding to the challenges of statelessness. Secondly, it proposes legal and institutional reforms that the government of Nigeria must urgently embark upon to address the phenomenon of statelessness. These reforms will ensure that the national identity card or residence certificate replaces the indigene certificate as the only proof of Nigerian citizenship. / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Magister Legum - LLM / Statelessness is a global human rights problem affecting a vast number of individuals, families and communities worldwide. The concept of statelessness comes to existence as a conflict that was created by international law. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that everyone has the right to a nationality. Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides the right to state sovereignty. The latter article thus allows states to enact laws conferring nationality as it deems fit, even if such laws offend the former article. In addition, this phenomenon affects men and women differently, something which international law fails to take proper cognisance of. This causes the failure of properly being able to regulate the issue of statelessness. Furthermore, the failure at law stumps the growth of women by be destabilising and disempowering it. While Article 9 of Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women provides that there should be no discrimination between men and women with regard to the acquisition or conferral of nationality. However, there are 27 countries who maintain gender-based discriminatory nationality laws. One of the main reasons for generational statelessness is gender –based discriminatory nationality laws. The problem of statelessness will continue to persist if nothing is done to reform the laws of those countries who maintain the gender-based discriminatory nationality laws. This thesis will examine the legal gaps at international law in addressing the issue of statelessness. It will also look at States that continue to implement nationality laws and practices which are gender discriminatory. This thesis will argue that Article 9 is used as a basis of accountability for violator States who fail to protect women who have been subjected to human rights violations as a result of statelessness. It will also provide recommendations that will aid in acquiring effective change that could ultimately lead to the eradication of statelessness.

Cette étude vise à déterminer et à analyser le statut de l’apatride tel que conçu et élaboré par le droit international, le droit européen et les droits nationaux. Elle précise la notion d’apatride et éclaire les mécanismes de protection existants.La Première Partie est consacrée aux définitions de l’apatride et aborde le statut juridique de l’apatride sous l’angle du droit international. Afin de saisir la complexité et l’ampleur du phénomène de l’apatridie, l’analyse prend en considération l’apatridie de jure et l’apatridie de facto et étudie les causes de leur survenance.La définition de l’apatride de jure figurant dans la Convention des Nations Unies de 1954 relative au statut des apatrides a influencé l’ensemble des définitions utilisées en droit international, en droit de l’Union européenne (UE) et dans la législation de certains États membres de l’UE. La notion d’apatride de facto, quant à elle, figure dans plusieurs textes internationaux. Elle n’est toutefois pas toujours explicitement désignée comme telle et une définition univoque demeure difficile à établir. Un travail de clarification, à travers les concepts de protection e de non effectivité de la nationalité, est donc nécessaire.Le statut juridique de l’apatride en droit international, intimement lié aux droits que la Convention de 1954 garantit aux personnes apatrides, constitue le fondement du système de leur protection. Cette Convention s’applique aux apatrides de jure, mais les États sont invités à accorder aux apatrides de facto le même traitement. Certaines dispositions confèrent à ces derniers un statut spécifique ; d’autres établissent le traitement devant être garanti à l’apatride sur la base de celui que chaque État prévoit pour les étrangers ou pour ses ressortissants. Ces dispositions sont examinées à la lumière des textes internationaux et européens des droits de l’homme.La Deuxième Partie de l’étude est consacrée à la protection dont bénéficient les apatrides en droit de l’Union européenne et dans le droit des plusieurs États membres. Le choix a été dicté essentiellement par le fait que ces États sont les seuls à prévoir des procédures spécifiques et autonomes de reconnaissance du statut d’apatride (France, Italie, Espagne, Lettonie, Hongrie, Royaume-Uni et Luxembourg).Bien qu’en droit de l’Union il n’existe pas de statut propre à l’apatride, l’Union traite des apatrides dans le cadre de ses compétences en matière d’asile et de politique commune de l’immigration. Dépourvu de citoyenneté de l’Union, l’apatride qui se trouve sur son territoire peut être considéré comme un ressortissant de pays tiers ou comme une personne résidant sur le territoire d’un de ses États membres. Il est alors susceptible de bénéficier de certaines dispositions du droit de l’Union.L’analyse du statut juridique que les États membres accordent aux apatrides permet d’apprécier la mise en œuvre et le respect des dispositions de la Convention de 1954 dans les systèmes juridiques nationaux. La protection de l’apatride peut se réaliser par la reconnaissance de droits, mais également par le biais de textes législatifs permettant de prévenir la survenance de nouveaux cas d’apatridie et d’attribuer la nationalité aux apatrides. La pertinence et l’efficacité de ces textes, ainsi que leur conformité à la Convention de Nations Unies de 1961 sur la réduction des cas d’apatridie et à la Convention européenne sur la nationalité de 1997 sont également abordées.Afin de bénéficier de la protection mise en place par les États au niveau national, la personne dépourvue de nationalité doit être reconnue apatride de manière formelle. Ainsi, les procédures de reconnaissance de la qualité d’apatride revêtent une importance certaine. Les procédures des États membres sont analysées de manière approfondie, leurs points communs et leurs différences étant mis en évidence. / This study aims to identify and analyse the status of stateless persons as conceived and elaborated by International Law, European Law and national Laws. It clarifies the concept of stateless person and the existing protection mechanisms.The First Part of this study deals with definitions of stateless persons and with the legal status of stateless person in the light of International Law. In order to understand the complexity and the scale of the phenomenon of statelessness, this analysis takes into consideration the de jure statelessness and the de facto statelessness and identifies their causes.The definition of de jure stateless persons is included in the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954). This definition has influenced the definitions used in International Law, European Union (EU) Law and in the law of some EU Member States. The concept of de facto stateless person, for its part, appears in several international documents. Nevertheless, it is not always explicitly mentioned as such and an unambiguous definition is difficult to establish. This study tries to clarify this complexity through the concepts of protection and effective nationality.The legal status of stateless persons in International Law is closely related to the rights guaranteed by the 1954 Convention. This status constitutes the basis of the protection of stateless persons. The 1954 Convention applies to de jure stateless persons; however, States are encouraged to grant the same treatment to de facto stateless persons. Some provisions provide for a specific status; other provisions set out the minimum standard of treatment depending on the treatment enjoyed by nationals or by aliens. These provisions are analysed in the light of International Human Rights instruments.The Second Part of this study deals with the protection of stateless persons in European Union Law and in some Member States law. This choice was based on the fact that these Member States are the only ones who have established specific statelessness determination procedures (France, Italy, Spain, Latvia, Hungary, United Kingdom and Luxembourg).Stateless persons do not have a specific status in EU Law. Nevertheless, the EU deals with stateless persons within the framework of its powers on asylum matters and common immigration policy. Stateless persons in EU territory can be regarded as third-country nationals or as persons residing in the territory of a Member State. Thus, they may benefit of certain provisions of EU Law.This study examines the legal status granted by EU Member States to stateless persons. This analysis makes it possible to assess the implementation of the provisions of the 1954 Convention in national legal systems. The protection of stateless persons may be achieved by recognising rights to stateless persons but also by preventing new cases of statelessness and by granting nationality to stateless persons. This study examines national legislation in these fields and its compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961) and the European Convention on Nationality (1997).Statelessness determination procedures are fundamental in order to allow stateless persons to benefit from the State’s protection. Therefore, the procedures of EU Member States are thoroughly examined: their similarity and their differences are highlighted.

There are seventeen million people in the world who are stateless, not considered as citizens by any state. They suffer due to the current function of citizenship in the nation-state system, occupying a legal space outside of the system, yet, their lives are very much blighted by the system itself. This research examines the possibility that global citizenship could be a means to address statelessness. Global citizenship, unlike (national) citizenship, is, in theory, inclusive, and membership is based on our shared humanity. However, when approaching the global citizenship literature, two concerns became apparent. First, there is a significant lack of theorisation on the stateless in the discourse, and second, some scholars make the assumption that a global citizen has citizenship of a state – which the stateless do not. To begin to overcome these concerns, this research develops and implements a stateless centric perspective on global citizenship, using it to analyse the situation of the stateless in the case of Lebanon. The stateless centric approach developed here, views global citizenship through the actions and perspectives of those addressing statelessness. With four large and protracted stateless populations, Lebanon provides an empirically rich context, within which to undertake this research. The findings of the stateless centric perspective problematise the received wisdom of citizenship, the nation-state and allows for the exploration of the expressions and tensions in the practices of global citizenship. Drawing on a contextualised understanding of these practices, a ‘patchwork’ approach to global citizenship is proposed. This sees the creation of a public political space as an act of global citizenship, when it draws on universal principles. These universal principles are used to justify this space, taking on an instrumental role. It is a patchwork as these spaces can be seen in the wider global context, as either directly or indirectly connected, through their shared use of universal principles. By centralising the stateless in our conceptualisations of the nation-state, citizenship and global citizenship, the value of taking a stateless centric perspective, and its ability to draw out further nuances in the debate, is shown.

The aim of this study is to understand the situation of Rohingya through the concept of statelessness and to illustrate the importance of citizenship in relation to human rights. The Rohingya minority has for a long period of time been victims of violence and discrimination by the Myanmar government and military. In 1982, all Rohingyas were deprived their Myanmar citizenship through a domestic law, which is in conflict with international human rights law. Various military operations, attacks, and attempts have been made to drive the Rohingya population out of the country. Consequently, as of 2019, nearly one million stateless Rohingyas are living in overcrowded camps in neighbouring Bangladesh. By applying the philosophical understandings and conceptualisations of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben, this study seeks answers to how it is possible to perform such acts of breaching human rights. Furthermore, a number of official conventions and principles are analysed to seek answers to how the international community are obligated to act prior, during, and after atrocities on humanity are performed. The main findings of this study are that these acts of violence have been possible due to the Rohingya populations’ statelessness. The sustainable development goals aim to ‘leave no one behind’ and several universal documents and principles are in place to protect humanity from such atrocities. Nevertheless, the international community has clearly failed when it comes to protect the Rohingya population. One important and significant step towards preventing future genocides and ethnic cleansings has been identified through this study – all individuals need to be ensured their fundamental human rights.

This dissertation provides an intellectual history of statelessness from the First World War to the Cold War. Statelessness arose as a distinctive legal and bureaucratic category after 1921. In the following decades, lawyers and civil servants looked to the growing numbers of stateless people in their efforts to elaborate a new liberal international order in Europe and the wider world. It contends that the problem of mass statelessness after World War I motivated the idea that individuals, rather than states, are the subjects of international legal order. Despite the celebrated turn to the language of universal human rights in the postwar era, the problem of statelessness in this period supported the consolidation of the nation-state as the central unit of global organization. International legal scholars who had celebrated the rise of supranational forms of belonging in the interwar period turned to arguments for citizenship as the basic postulate for inclusion within international legal order. The debates among legal scholars, international civil servants, and state officials serve as crucial resources for charting the impact of statelessness on international political thought. I argue that the transformation of statelessness from an important intellectual problem in the period after World War I to an ambiguous moral problem associated with human rights after 1948, contributed to its marginalization as an object of humanitarian concern and as an important category for comprehending international political and legal order. This dissertation contributes the first in-depth account of how the problem of statelessness informed developing theories of the state and international law in the twentieth century, and of the consolidation of the concept of statelessness out of practical political and humanitarian considerations. Drawing on archival sources from England, France, Switzerland, Austria, and the United States, as well as published materials, I show that the concept of statelessness was built up by a variety of transnational figures, including stateless people demanding official recognition of statelessness as an international legal category in court cases after World War I. / History

This thesis considers the development of the concept of citizenship, both historically and in its supranational guise. It addresses the traditional models of citizenship that have arisen in the national arena before turning its focus to supranational citizenship. The development of quasi-citizenship rights at the European level between 1957 and 1992 are discussed whilst asking whether, in fact, these principles amounted to a de facto creation of citizenship as would be formally understood in a national model. Thereafter, post-1992 developments are considered via the activities of the European courts. The courts’ particularly activist role in expanding our understanding of Union citizenship by using existing Union legislation in imaginative ways is highlighted and used as a key factor in determining Union citizenship’s capacity to adapt and develop in the face of new challenges. This thesis plays particular attention to the non-Member State nationals who reside in Union territory and find themselves ostensibly deprived of citizenship rights despite being actively involve in the Union’s activities. Supranational citizenship is viewed through the unusual lens of stateless persons and this thesis suggests that Union citizenship does not live up to its ideals by excluding them from its understanding of the citizenry. It formulates a novel conception of rights-based residence, as opposed to nationality-based, supranational citizenship that is predicated on the Union’s heritage of respect for rights and would include Member State nationals, alongside third-country nationals, the stateless and refugees (who would struggle to gain recognition under a conventional citizenship paradigm), with the aspiration of rendering Union citizenship a more inclusive and rounded conception.

Magister Legum - LLM / The Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) provides that „everyone has the right to nationality.‟1 Nationality2 refers to the legal relationship between a State and an individual.3 The consequences are that this legal relationship gives rise to obligations and rights conferred by the State on these individuals. Statelessness occurs when an individual has no nationality of any country; a stateless person is someone who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its laws.