Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights on Certain Issues Regarding Nationality

Abstract

Sovereign states shall decide who will acquire or maintain their nationality. Thus, the issue on acquisition and loss of nationality of a State falls within the exclusive competence of this State. In other words, the issue of nationality, in principle, is a reserved domain of states. States shall determine their conditions about acquiring and losing their nationality in their internal laws. However, fulfilment of the stipulated conditions in internal law does not mean that person has an absolute right for acquisition of nationality because states have discretionary power. This discretionary power should be used by States in accordance with international law. The terms of international law consists of international conventions, customary international law and the principles of law generally recognized. The main international document that adopted the right to a nationality as a human right is the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Besides this, some of the conventions relating to nationality issues are from 12 April, The Hague Convention on Certain Questions relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws (1930) and the European Convention on Nationality (6 November, 1997). In our paper, firstly, the articles on the right to nationality and loss and deprivation of nationality in these international legal documents will be examined briefly. After that, in our study, the approaches of the European Court of Human Rights to the decisions about loss of nationality against a person's will and the denial of naturalization requests are going to be examined. Notwithstanding the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) does not contain any provision on the right to a nationality.in the past, the European Commission of Human Rights rejected cases concerning loss or deprivation of citizenship or denial of naturalization request on the grounds of incompatible ratione materiae. The ECrtHR changed its judicial opinion about this issue.