Figure - uploaded by Maarten Bolhuis
Content may be subject to copyright.
Number of citizenship deprivations for acts linked to terrorism in the countries studieda
Source publication
The departure of substantial numbers of 'foreign fighters' and the occurrence of terrorist attacks on European soil have prompted renewed interest in citizenship deprivation as a policy measure. This article aims to contribute to the debate on its utility as a counterterrorism measure by examining recent developments in citizenship deprivation legi...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... include four individuals who were in Belgium at the time of revocation (the latter two serving prison sentences): 'black widow of the jihad' Malika el Aroud, Bilal Soughir of Tunisian descent, Enis Sulejmani of Serbian descent, and leader of the radical Islamist movement Sharia4Belgium Fouad Belkacem. The remaining 13 individuals are foreign fighters believed to be in Syria.17 13 In France, the possibility to deprive a national of his or her citizenship in rela- tion to terrorism was introduced already in 1996, in the form of Article 25 of the Code Civil.18 The provision lists a number of categories of acts and crimes that-after a conviction-could lead to citizenship deprivation, and include convictions for acts against the fundamental interests of the nation or crimes or offences constituting acts of terrorism (sub 1 and 2).19 ...Context 2
... looking at the number of citizenship deprivations, as summarised in Table 2, it is notable that Germany (which is not included as it has no cases) and UK are the two extremes. The UK has had a limited but stable number of deprivations for a longer period of time, but this exploded in 2017, although the number of deprivation decisions 'conducive to the public good' in the following year was considerably lower. ...Similar publications
This article provides an outline of the Boko Haram group – its origins, ideology, and rise to become one of the deadliest terrorist groups in the world. The threat posed and subsequent challenge faced by the Nigerian state is explored, including the country’s overall counter terrorism strategy and associated legislation.
Citations
... Citizenship revocation can be understood as a method of 'social pruning' or otherwise sorting certain citizens out of the polity (Tripkovic 2021). Scholarship establishes that all citizens are damaged by weakening the citizenship protections of a few (Bauböck 2019;Bolhuis and Wijk 2020;Macklin 2018;Serdar 2017). ...
In 2018, the Danish Supreme Court revoked Adam Johansen’s citizenship in conjunction with his conviction for terrorism. Applying a proportionality test adapted from European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence for naturalised, not natural, citizens, the Danish court determined that Johansen’s Muslim faith tied him to Tunisia, his father’s country, rather than to Denmark. In March 2022, the ECtHR unanimously upheld this judgment. In so doing, the ECtHR solidified an emerging standard in cases of citizenship revocation for natural citizens, which standard is weaker than the protections enjoyed by naturalised citizens. This article reviews the Danish and ECtHR jurisprudence to show how the explosive expansion of citizenship revocation in relation to terror crimes, combined with the ECtHR’s emerging jurisprudence rejecting substantive review for such revocation, demonstrates a significant, multidirectional weakening of rights protections in Europe.
... Exclusionary practices affecting the political community are further facilitated through the discourse on securitisation, where the recent security-based deprivation of citizenship in several European countries is one example that has received significant attention, both in reports by the EU institutions and think tanks (Strik, 2019;Van der Baaren et al., 2022) and academic research (Bolhuis & Wijk, 2020;Mantu, 2018;Reyntjens, 2019;Wautelet, 2016;Zedner, 2016). These 20 examinations present a critical perspective on these practices, arguing about both their relative inefficiency as a counter-terrorism measure and warning that they may compromise democratic citizenship through the practice of its involuntary revocation. ...
The objective of this deliverable (D2.3 henceforth) is to enhance the theoretical framework of the project and to further support the efforts of other work packages. It builds upon the groundwork laid out in the theoretical framework deliverable (D2.1), entitled “Democracy and Media: A Discursive-Material Approach”, by integrating additional analytical data.
D2.3 consists of two parts, reviewing empirical research on European democracy and media, respectively, and documenting the contemporary (21st century) articulations produced by academic and policy-oriented research, as well as institutionalised activist groups (NGOs).
More specifically, and following the structure outlined in D2.1, the report is divided into 9 sections (S) and presents an overview of research on the following topics:
(1) Core components of democracy and media (S1 and S5);
(2) The role of media in democracy (S6)
(3) Struggles over democracy and media’s democratic roles (S2 and S7);
(4) Conditions of possibility of democracy and democratic media (S3 and S8);
(5) Threats to democracy and media’s democratic roles (S4 and S9).
This deliverable identifies prevailing strands of existing research on democracy and media within the European context. It particularly highlights conceptual and methodological patterns in the reviewed literature, including the predominance of quantitative approaches, while also acknowledging the presence of alternative methodologies.
Furthermore, D2.3 presents a key entry point into Task 2.4, which consists of the continuous theory-driven reanalysis of the project’s interventions.
... There are two notable situations which prompt denationalized citizens to-rather than being assigned to their countries of residual citizenship-become global 'non-citizens' . First, it is common practice of European countries, such as Belgium, Netherlands and the United Kingdom, to revoke citizenship while the affected individual is outside the state (Fargues 2017;Bolhuis and van Wijk 2020;Batul Naqvi 2021). This is at times inevitable, as the citizen's whereabouts are unknown, and the process of revocation must consequently be conducted in absentia. ...
The article examines instances of de jure and de facto denationalization that arise from (suspected) terrorism by analyzing penal outcomes for affected citizens. The article first exposes cases of de jure denationalization that confine citizens to global spaces and draws parallels with instances of de facto denationalization that deny repatriation from abroad. I then argue that both situations signal state’s avoidance of the duty to punish, deviate from conventional penal aspirations and engender volatile global penality. To support this argument, I explore three questions: (1) who punishes, (2) who is punished and (3) what the purpose of punishment is. I conclude by exposing the emerging features of global neo-colonial penality as they pertain to both its objects and objectives.
... This practice is relatively common in the UK, where provisions allowing for citizenship deprivation in cases of serious crime were expanded in 2014, and where at least 172 people have been deprived of their citizenship since just 2010(Bolhuis and van Wijk, 2020). ...
From 2014 to 2022, 35 individuals were prosecuted before the Court of BiH for criminal offenses related to terrorist activities on foreign battlefields. While a handful of independent and investigative media outlets have reported on the issue of foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) and related criminal legal processes in BiH, there are no academic or expert studies on judicial responses to the crimes of FTFs. Hence, this publication will: analyze criminal cases related to the departures and activities of FTFs (as of June 2022), meaningfully compare legal practices in selected European judiciaries with practices in BiH, and provide recommendations for policymakers and practitioners.
... godine i gdje su najmanje 172 osobe lišene državljanstva samo od 2010. godine(Bolhuis i van Wijk, 2020). ...
Od 2014. do 2022. godine 35 osoba je procesuirano pred Sudom Bosne i Hercegovine za krivična djela povezana s terorističkim organizacijama na stra- nim ratištima. Iako malobrojni nezavisni i istraživački mediji informiraju o stranim terorističkim borcima i krivičnim procesima u Bosni i Hercegovini, ne postoje sistematizirane spoznaje niti znanstvene i stručne studije o pravosudnim odgovorima na krivična djela povezana sa stranim terorističkim borcima. Stoga ova publikacija analizira krivične predmete povezane s odlascima i aktivnostima stranih terorističkih boraca (do juna 2022. godi- ne), smisleno vrši komparacije s pravnim praksama u odabranom europskom pravosuđu, te omogućava preporuke za kreatore politika i praktičare.
... This leaves more than a half of countries in the sample (22) that permit citizenship revocation following a citizen's presumably harmful conduct: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Slovenia, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom. 1 Furthermore, citizenship revocation rules have been subjected to vigorous legislative activity in the last couple of decades, as half of denationalizing countries have either adopted such policies for the first time or made them stricter since the early 2000s (see Appendix). And although revocation numbers remain small (see Bolhuis and Van Wijk, 2020), the reasons for which will be discussed later, legislative efforts in this domain testify to the state's increasingly strong desire to manage and control specific threats through norms of citizenship. ...
... In the UK, for example, targets of denationalization are almost exclusively Muslim men (Gibney, 2020b). In Belgium and the Netherlands, most revocations have so far concerned citizens of Moroccan descent while in France they similarly target those of Moroccan and Tunisian origin (Bolhuis and Van Wijk, 2020). The citizenship 'history' of a criminal offender can thus significantly impact ensuing penal outcomes, causing significant hardship to those whose belonging is contested due to polity's communitarian aspirations. ...
... Regardless of how persuasive both these accounts seem, neither of them, however, provides a completely satisfactory explanation of the reasons for denationalization. On the one hand, the communitarian version cannot explain why only a handful of citizens of foreign descent have so far lost their citizenship: for example, since 2014 there were 19 revocations in Belgium,8 in France,16 in Netherlands,and 148 in the UK (Bolhuis and Van Wijk, 2020). Compared to the number of foreign-associated citizens of these countries, the numbers are miniscule, and even in the absence of data for other countries, it seems safe to say that the mere fact of foreign descent cannot fully explain revocation decisions. ...
This article examines the underlying aims of denationalization of criminal offenders by framing the discussion within citizenship theory. It argues that such citizenship revocation policies exclude individuals who are perceived as non-ideal citizens under a complex vision of citizenship that combines communitarian and liberal undertones, which has significant consequences for detecting those with weak claims to membership. To develop this argument, the article advances in the following way. I first argue that the ‘protective’ function of citizenship, which has so far shielded domestic offenders from expulsion, has been eroding due to increasing reliance on denationalization. I then show, by employing an original study of European policies, that the ‘protective’ function of citizenship is eroding not only in general terms, but that it furthermore targets citizens of a particular profile that is continuously changing. Finally, I argue that recent revocation policies that are premised on security concerns, promote a complex vision of citizenship that combines elements of communitarian and liberal conceptions of belonging and works to exclude citizens of foreign descent who, at the same time, repudiate liberal values. Consequently, the status of the criminal rather than non-citizen, gains prominence in determining those at risk of exclusion from the polity.
... Turkey, Syria, Iraq and the Kurdish authorities in Northern Syria currently detain hundreds of undeportable non-citizens suspected to have been fighting for Islamic State [5], while countries like Australia, Canada, France, India, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have over the past years struggled how to treat suspected or convicted foreign terrorists who cannot be deported [6]. The limbo-situation of these 'undesirable but unreturnable' migrants (UBUs) results from a range of factors, including non-cooperation on behalf of the State of origin, a lack of transport options to enforce removal or international human rights impediments blocking refoulement [7]. ...
... -The detainee is transferred to a third country: a. of which he had not possessed nationality and/or of which he has not been a legal resident, prior to detention at Guantánamo, and b. with the objective to allow the ex-detainee to temporarily or permanently reside in the resettlement country. 5 This review led us to exclude 22 detainees from the Docket Database list, leaving us with a total of 150 'resettled' detainees. An annex detailing which detainees have been excluded from our database of cases, and why, is presented at the end of the article. ...
... This article learns us not to expect much of western democracies helping out. In fact, some democracies like Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark were the first to revoke the nationality of their foreign fighters that held dual citizenship, thereby complicating any future deportations [5,95]. If the Kurdish authorities, possibly with the help and leverage of the U.S., ever try to resettle any of these detainees, their best bet may be to press or lure some small island nations or authoritarian regimes into cooperation. ...
Against the backdrop of countries increasingly being confronted with undesirable but unreturnable non-citizen terrorist suspects, this article describes the resettlement process of 150 cleared but unreturnable Guantanamo Bay detainees. Merely 13% of these detainees have been resettled in full democracies, compared to 52% in authoritarian regimes. Using Starkley et al.’s concept of ‘zone agreement’ the article explains how the U.S. particularly managed to incentivize pragmatically oriented – rather than idealistically motivated – governments to engage in third country resettlement [16]. From the perspective of the U.S. the resettlement scheme can be considered relatively successful, while the experiences of resettlement countries and the resettled detainees themselves have been very mixed.
Citizenship deprivation is a state imposed, involuntary loss of legal membership to a sovereign state. State authorities execute this non-consensual act through administrative measures, often without judicial oversight. Such extreme measure severs the link between state and its citizens, resulting in severe restrictions on constitutional fundamental rights. Since constitutional fundamental rights are primarily applicable to citizens, the legal status of citizenship is essential for their protection. Depriving an individual of their citizenship inevitably leads to restrictions on fundamental rights that are commonly protected by the constitutions of many countries, including the right to vote, freedom of movement and of residence, and the pursuit of happiness. Since individuals are no longer able to be recognized as subjects of rights after their citizenship is stripped, some scholars argue that stripping citizenship also deprives their “right to have rights.” Historically used to exclude undesirable members, citizenship deprivation was largely abandoned after World War II due to its association with the Nazi regime. However, increased public security concerns from terrorism at the turn of the millennium have led many Western liberal states to reintroduce this practice. Countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany are revoking state membership from individuals involved in terrorism for the public good and counterterrorism purposes. Over the past 20 years, the expansion of citizenship deprivation has brought about significant constitutional challenges associated with principles of equality and proportionality, prompting the need for a thorough review and potential reform. This paper calls for the abolition of citizenship deprivation. Through a qualitative comparative analysis of the legislative history and practices of citizenship deprivation in the United States, the UK, France, and Germany, along with an examination of the legislative framework in the Republic of Korea, it is shown that, despite the need for compliance with principles of equality and proportionality, citizenship deprivation consistently violates these principles in ways that cannot be effectively resolved. Citizenship deprivation legislation in the UK, France, and Germany discriminates based on whether individuals hold multiple nationalities or the method by which they acquired their citizenship. This discrimination lacks reasonable justification, as there is no valid reason for the state to differentiate its citizens based on the number of nationalities held or the process of acquisition, whether by birth or naturalization. Consequently, citizenship deprivation undermines the principle of equality. Additionally, citizenship deprivation violates the principle of proportionality because it does not meet the standards of suitability and necessity for achieving its intended aims. Stripping individuals of their citizenship may actually exacerbate rather than mitigate terrorism, thereby failing to effectively be achieving the objective of combating terrorism. It is also an inappropriate and unnecessary measure achieving such objectives, as criminal punishments can achieve such aims with fewer restrictions on constitutional fundamental rights. Furthermore, while all citizens who harm the public interest can face criminal sanctions, there is no reasonable justification for additionally imposing citizenship deprivation solely on citizens with multiple nationalities. Stripping citizenship from those who commit terrorist acts does not enhance overall safety for the majority but rather undermines the measure's proportionality. Given the persistent challenges in resolving violations of equality and proportionality, citizenship deprivation should be abolished.
Keywords : nationality, citizenship, denationalization, citizenship deprivation
This interdisciplinary collection, edited by leading scholars, provides the first book-length treatment of statelessness in the region in which most stateless persons reside. This book fills a critical gap in understanding statelessness in Asia, offering a unique interdisciplinary and comprehensive set of perspectives. This book brings case studies and expertise together to explore statelessness in Asia, itself a diverse region, and offers new insights as to what it means to be, de facto and de jure, stateless. In identifying key points of similarities and divergences across the region, as well as critical nodes for comparisons, this book aims to provide fresh frameworks for comparative research in this area.
The aim of the article is to analyse the legal situation of the children held in camps in northeast Syria. The situation in the camps is devastating and poses a threat to the children’s right to life as well as physical and mental integrity. The article explores whether the states of citizenship of these children exercise any jurisdiction over them, and if the answer is affirmative, to what extent they exercise this jurisdiction. Next, the research will focus on the question of whether the states of citizenship have the obligation to repatriate those children from Syria. To this aim, the status of these children as victims of human trafficking will be also examined. Lastly, the deliberations will focus on the policy of citizenship revocation that is applied by some states in terrorism combatting and it will be studied whether this policy can be applied to children in conformity with international law. It results from the analysis that states have obligations towards children placed in the Syrian camps being their nationals, especially an obligation to repatriate them and to enable their rehabilitation and reintegration.
