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Children at Risk of Statelessness in the Fight against Terrorism
Abstract
The departure of ‘foreign fighters’ to join terrorist groups in armed conflicts abroad has led many countries to adopt a policy of citizenship deprivation. This paper demonstrates that citizenship deprivation measures do not have the desired effect for national security, while increasing the risk of statelessness for the children of ‘foreign fighters’. Citizenship deprivation laws in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK and the Netherlands are discussed, in order to view them against international obligations. It concludes that current citizenship deprivation measures are mostly problematic regarding the prohibition of arbitrary citizenship deprivation, the principle of non-discrimination and relevant children’s rights.
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.
Citizenship serves different interests. It provides security and empowerment for the citizen. For the state, control of citizenship is an attribute of sovereignty which may treat citizenship as a privilege at its behest rather than an individual right claimed in defiance of its interests. This tension is situated within a tripartite relationship also involving international law. However, international law’s insistence on a human right to citizenship is weak and affects the procedural, rather than the substantive, aspects of deprivation. The tension between sovereignty, human rights, and international law will be examined through the lens of citizenship deprivation within counterterrorism. The article will focus on laws and practices in Bahrain and the UK, both states at the forefront of reliance on citizenship deprivation for security purposes. As a result of the weakness of international law, the divergent polities of Bahrain and the UK are both enabled to promote citizenship deprivation.
This article studies the legal issues that arise when terrorists are deprived of their citizenship. Although the rules governing the loss of nationality are among the last bulwarks of states’ sovereign discretion, this article shows that international law, Convention rights and even EU law place significant constraints on the exercise of this discretion. It also advances a series of recommendations that could help states minimize the risk of their terrorist denationalization laws being found to be in breach of those higher legal standards. Observance of those recommendations, however, will not prevent terrorist denationalization laws from remaining vulnerable to major criticism, especially concerning their effectiveness, their applicability, and the ‘slippery slope’ on which they put the state.
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La France a procédé à sa seizième déchéance de nationalité en dix-sept ans', france,info (online
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Children Born of the ISIL Conflict in Iraq
- See Also
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See also Lillian Gill, 'Children Born of the ISIL Conflict in Iraq' (MA Thesis, Columbia
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european-states'-obligations-to-repatriate-the-children-detainedin-camps-in-northeast-syria-20210722.pdf> ('OSJI Briefing Paper'); Save the Children, When Am I going to Start to Live? The Urgent Need to Repatriate Children Trapped in Al Hol and Roj Camps
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When Am I going to Start to Live? The Urgent Need to Repatriate Children Trapped in Al Hol
and Roj Camps (Report, 2021) <https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/document/whenam-i-going-start-live-urgent-need-repatriate-foreign-children-trapped-al-hol-and-roj>.
Australian Mother of Five Stripped of Citizenship, Leaving Two Children Potentially Stateless
- Ben Doherty
Ben Doherty, 'Australian Mother of Five Stripped of Citizenship, Leaving Two
Children Potentially Stateless', The Guardian (online, 17 January 2020)
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/18/australian-mother-of-five-stripped-ofcitizenship-leaving-two-children-potentially-stateless>.
Invisible Citizens: Humiliation and a Life in the Shadows, A Legal and Policy Study on Statelessness in Lebanon (Frontiers Ruwad Association
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Samira Trad and Abbas Shiblack, Invisible Citizens: Humiliation and a Life in the Shadows, A
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- Eg See
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At Last, I Can Sleep": Brothers Kidnapped by ISIS Reunited with Mother in Syria
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Bethan McKernan and Joshua Surtees, '"At Last, I Can Sleep": Brothers Kidnapped by ISIS
Reunited with Mother in Syria', The Guardian (online, 22 January 2019)
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France Repatriates 10 Children of ISIS Jihadists from Syrian Refugee Camps', International Observatory of Human Rights (online
- Eg See
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See, eg, Helen Davidson, 'Children of ISIS Terrorist Khaled Sharrouf Removed from Syria,
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International Terrorism and Statelessness: Revoking the Citizenship of ISIL Foreign Fighters
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Shiva Jayaraman, 'International Terrorism and Statelessness: Revoking the Citizenship of
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The Obligation to Grant Nationality to Stateless Children under Customary International Law' (2019) 27(3) Michigan State International Law Review 441
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William Thomas Worster, 'The Obligation to Grant Nationality to Stateless Children under
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); International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, opened for signature
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, opened for signature 13 December
2006, 2515 UNTS 3 (entered into force 3 May 2008) art 18(2); International Convention on
the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, opened
for signature 18 December 1990, 2220 UNTS 3 (entered into force 1 July 2003) art 29.
Regional treaties which protect the right to a nationality include the European Convention on
Nationality, opened for signature 6 November 1997, CETS No 166 (entered into force 1
March 2000) art 4 ('European Convention on Nationality');
) art 29; American Convention on Human Rights, opened for signature 22
Arab Charter on Human Rights,
opened for signature 22 May 2004 (entered into force 15 March 2008) art 29; American
Convention on Human Rights, opened for signature 22 November 1969, 1144 UNTS 144
(entered into force 18 July 1978) art 20 ('American Convention on Human Rights');
European Convention on Nationality (n 145) art 4; African Charter on the Right and Welfare of the Child, opened for signature
- Eg See
See, eg, European Convention on Nationality (n 145) art 4; African Charter on the Right and
Welfare of the Child, opened for signature 1 July 1990, OAU Doc CAB/LEG/153/Rev.2
(entered into force 29 November 1999) art 6; American Convention on Human Rights (n 145)
art 20; Covenant on the Rights of the Child in Islam, signed 30 June 2005, art 7.
For the use of the CRC in national courts, see 'Realising Rights? The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Court
For the use of the CRC in national courts, see 'Realising Rights? The UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child in Court' (Research Report, Child Rights International Network, January
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Interpreting the 1961 Statelessness Convention and Avoiding Statelessness resulting from Loss and Deprivation of Nationality (Summary Conclusions
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European Court of Human Rights, Fourth Section, Application No 76136/12
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Ramadan v Malta (Judgment) (European Court of Human Rights, Fourth Section, Application
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Citizenship Deprivation under the European Convention-System: A Case Study of Belgium
Elke Cloots (n 175) 76. See also Louise Reyntjens, 'Citizenship Deprivation under the
European Convention-System: A Case Study of Belgium' (2019) 1(2) Statelessness &
Citizenship Review 263.
Expert Opinion: How the Netherlands, France and the UK are Leaving Children Stranded at Risk of Statelessness in Iraq and Syria
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René DeGroot et al, 'Expert Opinion: How the Netherlands, France and the UK are Leaving
Children Stranded at Risk of Statelessness in Iraq and Syria', European Network on
Statelessness (Blog Post, 29 October 2021) <https://www.statelessness.eu/updates/blog/
expert-opinion-how-netherlands-france-and-uk-are-leaving-children-stranded-risk>.
What EU Member States Can Learn from Kosovo's Experience in Repatriating Former Foreign Fighters and their Families' (Policy Brief, Clingendael Institute
- Teuta Avdimetaj
- Julie Coleman
Teuta Avdimetaj and Julie Coleman, 'What EU Member States Can Learn from Kosovo's
Experience in Repatriating Former Foreign Fighters and their Families' (Policy Brief,
Clingendael Institute, May 2020) <https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/2020-06/
Policy_Brief_Kosovo_experience_repatriating_former_foreign_fighters_May_2020.pdf>.
In accordance with UN Security Council
In accordance with UN Security Council, Resolution 2427 (2018), UN Doc S/RES/2427 (9
July 2018) 5 [20].