The Risk of Statelessness: Reasserting a Rule for the Protection of the Right to Nationality

Abstract

A global effort to combat statelessness and defend the universal right to nationality is currently underway. Nevertheless, questions persist about the proper scope of the right to nationality, the appropriate form of statelessness protection, and the legal limits of state discretion to deny or deprive an individual of nationality. These questions have animated a heated transnational debate about statelessness in Hispaniola, where the government of the Dominican Republic has designed a legal system that excludes persons of Haitian descent from Dominican nationality. Central to this conflict is a question about whether actions by the Dominican state leave persons of Haitian descent stateless -without nationality anywhere in the world.