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The appellant (Mr. Hashi) was born in Somalia, arrived in the UK in 1995 as a child, and was granted UK citizenship in April 2004 at age 14. On 18 June 2012, the Secretary of State issued a deprivation order under section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981, stating it was conducive to the public good to remove Mr. Hashi’s citizenship on account of national-security concerns related to alleged involvement in Islamist extremism. By then, Mr. Hashi had left the UK, was detained in Djibouti, and ultimately transferred to the United States where he was prosecuted for terrorism-related offenses. Although he tried to appeal Special Immigration Appeals Commission’s (“SIAC”) decision, because his primary statelessness claim failed, SIAC refused to extend the 28-day limit for his late appeal. He argued that deprivation rendered him stateless, since Somalia’s 1962 citizenship law revoked Somali nationality when a Somali acquired foreign citizenship.  SIAC, however, found that this 1962 law had been superseded by a Transitional Federal Charter (TFC) that came into force in February 2004, explicitly allowing dual citizenship. SIAC preferred evidence from the Secretary of State’s expert (and noted inconsistencies in the defense expert’s prior testimony in a different case), concluding that Mr. Hashi remained a Somali national and thus would not be rendered stateless. The Court of Appeal upheld SIAC’s decision in all respects, confirming that the TFC had legal force from early 2004, that Mr. Hashi retained Somali nationality, and that his deprivation of British citizenship did not contravene the statutory prohibition against making a person stateless.

The complainant was born in Nigeria and naturalised in Germany in February 2002. The competent authorities rescinded the complainant's naturalisation after it was discovered that the naturalisation had been unlawful because the complainant had fraudulently deceived the State authorities. After the administrative courts upheld the authorities’ decision, the complainant asserted a violation of his rights under Article 16 paragraph 1 sentence 2 of the Constitution by means of a constitutional complaint to the Federal Constitutional Court. The Federal Constitutional Court held that the constitutional complaint was unsuccessful because, amongst others, Article 16 paragraph 1 sentence 1 and sentence 2 of the German Constitution does not per se prohibit the loss of nationality if the person concerned becomes stateless as a result.

The applicant claims to have suffered material and non-material damage because of acts and omissions by officials of the Municipality of Sliven. Her claims relate to the refusal by officials to issue her identity documents because they did not consider her to be a Bulgarian national. The Burgas Administrative Court dismissed the case as unfounded because the applicant did not appeal to the competent administrative body(which was the Ministry of Justice and not the Municipality of Sliven).

The Court of Appeal (Civil Division) examined the extent of the powers of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) in cases where the Secretary of State has deprived a British citizen of citizenship on national security grounds. The court clarified the interpretation of Section 2B of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission Act 1997 in light of previous landmark cases, specifically Rehman and Begum. Ultimately, the Court upheld the SIAC's decisions, asserting that while the SIAC’s review scope is broader than initially thought, its handling of the appellant's case did not warrant reversal. 

The respondent was deprived of his British nationality by a decision taken by the Secretary of State for the Home Department (“SSHD”) under section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981. The SSHD argued that the deprivation decision did not render the respondent stateless but rather it was the respondent’s failure to re-apply for Iraqi nationality, which he had previously held, that did so. The Supreme Court dismissed this argument and refused the appeal.

Shamima Begum, aged 15, left the UK for Syria to live with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (“ISIS”). She was deprived of her British citizenship by a decision taken by the Secretary of State for the Home Department on national security grounds under section 40(2) of the British Nationality Act 1981. On appeal from the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (“SIAC”), the Court of Appeal held that the decision to deprive Begum of her citizenship was lawful and dismissed the appeal.

The case concerns the revocation of the applicant’s Danish nationality by the Danish Ministry of Immigration and Integration, on the basis of her membership in the Islamic State. The Court held that the Danish courts had conducted an adequate and sufficient assessment of the decision to revoke the applicant’s nationality, and therefore rejected the application as inadmissible.

The applicants are a father and his three sons who became Russian nationals between 2002 and 2004. In 2022, the prosecutor´s office for Shatura City in the Moscow Region filed a lawsuit to declare the applicants’ naturalisations void as a consequence of having allegedly provided false documents for their naturalisation applications. The Shatura City Court sided with the prosecutor’s office and declared that the applicants had never acquired Russian nationality.

The case concerns the loss of Danish nationality by the applicant who was born outside Denmark to a Danish mother and had spent less than a year in Denmark prior to her 22nd birthday, in accordance with the Law of Danish Nationality. The Court held that Article 20 TFEU, read in conjunction with Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, did not preclude such legislation by Member States, provided that the persons concerned had the opportunity to lodge, within a reasonable period, an application for the retention or recovery of nationality, for the authorities to examine the proportionality of the consequences of the loss of nationality from the perspective of EU law, and allow the retention or recovery of nationality. However, the period must extend for a reasonable time beyond the date by which the person concerned reaches the age stated in the legislation, and cannot begin to run unless the authorities have informed the person of the loss of nationality, and the right to apply for the maintenance or recovery of nationality.

The applicant is a dual Danish and Algerian national who has been deprived of his Danish nationality and deported from Denmark with a permanent re-entry ban for joining the Islamic State. The applicant claimed a violation of Article 8 ECHR, but the Court found that the Danish decision was not arbitrary. 

The authorities in Azerbaijan terminated the nationality of an independent journalist and chairman of an NGO for the protection of journalists, rendering him stateless. The Court found that such measure had been arbitrary and in violation of Article 8 ECHR, given that it rendered the applicant stateless, in disregard for the 1961 Convention, and was not accompanied by due procedural safeguards. In the particular circumstances of the case, for the purposes of examining the arbitrariness of the decision terminating the applicant’s nationality, the Court did not consider it necessary to establish whether the applicant’s renunciation of his nationality was forced or voluntary, which was a matter in dispute between the parties.

In a case concerning a Dutch national associated with ISIS, the Council of State ruled that the decisions from the Dutch authorities to declare the applicant undesirable and to withdraw her Dutch nationality should be annulled on the grounds that they did not sufficiently take into consideration the best interests of her minor children and her right to family life.

This case concerns the refusal of the Azerbaijani authorities to issue the applicant, who is of Azerbaijani ethnicity, lives in Azerbaijan and was born in Georgia, with an identity card, thereby denying him Azerbaijani citizenship. The applicant complained that this decision by the authorities was in breach of Article 8 of the ECHR. The Court found that the denial of Azerbaijani citizenship to the applicant had considerable adverse consequences for his enjoyment of various rights. It was not accompanied by the necessary procedural safeguards and must be considered arbitrary.

The authorities refused to examine the applications of Dutch nationals, with dual nationality of a non-EU country, for renewal of their Dutch passports. The decision was based on the fact that they had lost their Dutch nationality because they possessed a foreign nationality and had their principal residence for an uninterrupted period of 10 years outside the Netherlands and the EU. The CJEU found that Member States may lay down rules regulating the loss of their nationality and, as a result, the loss of EU citizenship, where the genuine link between the person and that State is durably interrupted. Nevertheless, the loss of nationality must respect the principle of proportionality, which requires an individual assessment of the consequences of that loss for the person from the point of view of EU law.

The Applicant was born in Uzbekistan in 1974 and obtained Russian citizenship in 2005. In 2017, he was convicted of an extremist crime for organisation of an extremist religious community (Nur movement) branch in the city of Blagoveshchensk and sentenced to imprisonment. In January 2019, his Russian citizenship was removed because of the conviction. After being released from prison in April 2019, the Applicant did not have any identification documents except for certificate of release, as his Russian passport was withheld. He did not have a chance to acquire any other documents to legalise his stay in Russia or leave the country, since he was arrested and placed in the migration detention centre five minutes after his release from the prison. As a result, Russian state court of civil jurisdiction declared the Applicant guilty of an administrative offence for violation of rules of stay in the Russian Federation under Article 18.8 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation ("CAO") and prescribed a punishment in the form of penalty and administrative expulsion from the Russian territory.

Russian authorities contacted Uzbekistan to expel him there, however Uzbekistan did not agree to accept the Applicant. As a result, the Applicant remained in custody for about two years, since Russian law does not have provisions granting stateless individuals the right to challenge their detention nor requiring the courts to determine its duration when ordering the detention. Following unsuccessful challenges of his detention in the Russian state courts of civil jurisdiction, the Applicant filed a complaint with the Russian Constitutional Court challenging the constitutionality of the relevant legal provisions. The Constitutional Court dismissed the appeal finding all the challenged provisions were constitutional because its earlier judgment No. 14-P/2017 of 25 May 2017 already provided stateless individuals a right to challenge their further detention three months after the date of the decision to detain and expel them. The Constitutional Court also contacted Uzbekistan authorities again and they finally agreed to receive the Applicant in Uzbekistan.

A dual British and Pakistani national who was detained in a camp in Syria was deprived of her British nationality in December 2019 on the grounds that this would be conducive to the public good. A copy of the notice of the deprivation was placed on the applicant's file but was not communicated to her at this time. Under regulations made under the British Nationality Act 1981, this was considered to constitute notice. The deprivation of citizenship was only communicated to the applicant when her lawyers contacted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in September 2020 to ask for assistance with the applicant’s repatriation and were later informed of this decision by the Home Office in October 2020. The applicant applied for judicial review, claiming that the domestic regulation in question and the deprivation decision had no legal effect. The Court of Appeal dismissed the Secretary of State appeal against the High Court decision finding in the applicant's favour. The judgment is currently under appeal before the Supreme Court. 

The case concerns the acquisition of Greek nationality by the son of a mother who had lost Greek nationality prior to his birth. The court ruled that individuals whose mother had lost Greek nationality on grounds other than marriage were not eligible to acquire Greek nationality.

The case concerns an application for restoration of his Greek nationality. The court found that the applicant was aware of the fact that he had lost Greek nationality for several years, since he had applied to acquire Turkish nationality as a stateless person. The application was thus deemed inadmissible.

Two of the applicants, E3 and N3, were deprived of their British citizenship by the defendant, the Secretary of State for the Home Department. Following the determination of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (“SIAC”) in similar cases, the defendant withdrew her deprivation decisions against the applicants, whose citizenship was reinstated. 

During the period of deprivation, the third applicant, ZA, who is the daughter of one of the applicants, was born. The applicants claimed that ZA should be automatically entitled to British citizenship. The court held that the child of a British citizen born during a period in which her father had been deprived of his citizenship (which was later reinstated), was not automatically British at birth, as the decision to reinstate the father’s citizenship did not have retroactive effect.  

This appeal to the Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber concerns the Secretary of State for the Home Department’s (hereinafter SSHD) decision to deprive the appellant of his British citizenship. The Upper Tribunal addressed the issue of whether Article 8(1) of the ECHR was engaged and whether the SSDH discretionary decision under section 40(2) or (3) to deprive the individual of his or her British citizenship was exercised correctly. The grounds for judicial review is that the delay in acting on the appellant’s fraud reduces the public interest in deprivation and is a disproportionate interference with Article 8 ECHR.

The case concerns Danish authorities’ decisions to deprive a dual national of his Danish citizenship and to deport him, following conviction for receiving training with ISIS. This was found to be compliant with Article 8 ECHR. The Court reasoned that deprivation of nationality was not arbitrary, that there had been sufficient opportunities to appeal, and that the crime in question, terrorism, was a serious one that endangered human rights. The punishment of deprivation of nationality was found to be proportionate. The Court also found that deprivation of nationality in this instance did not result in impermissible consequences as it did not render the applicant stateless.

This appeal arose from decisions of first and second respondents to refuse the appellant’s application for an Irish passport on the basis that he is not an Irish citizen. The appellant’s passport application was on grounds of automatic birth right citizenship derived through the residence of his father, an Afghan national, who gave false information on his initial refugee application in the State. The Court of Appeal had decided in favour of the Minister, holding that a declaration of refugee status which is revoked on the basis that the applicant had provided false and misleading information leads to the declaration being void ab initio.

The Supreme Court allowing the appeal, held that while a refugee declaration is ‘‘in force’’ and until such time as it is revoked, it must be regarded as being valid. This was based on the fact that the Minister for Justice has a discretion as to whether or not to revoke and is only required to do so when it is considered appropriate. This discretion would have enabled the Minister for Justice in an appropriate case to consider the effect of a decision to revoke on those who obtained derivative rights prior to revocation. The Court held that residence status conferred by the State on a parent based on false or misleading information could be included for the calculation of the period required to confer an entitlement of citizenship on the appellant.

Article 25 of the French Civil Code provides that an individual may be stripped of their French nationality where, inter alia, it was acquired by naturalization and where the individual has been convicted of a crime that constituted an attack on the fundamental interests of France or an act of terrorism. Deprivation of French nationality is not allowed where it would render the individual stateless. The applicant was deprived of his French nationality, which he had acquired by naturalization, following a decision of the Paris Criminal Court (Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris) convicting him for his participation in an association of criminals with a view to preparing an act of terrorism. That court found that he had joined a terrorist group and participated in training and armed operations of that group. The Council of State (Conseil d’État) upheld the decree of deprivation of nationality because the applicant held Algerian nationality since birth and could not be deprived of it since the Algerian code of nationality only authorises the deprivation of nationality for persons who have acquired it after birth. Therefore, the loss of French nationality would not render him stateless and was thus not illegal under French law. The Council of State also ruled on the proportionality of the decree with regard to the European Convention on Human Rights and found that, given the seriousness of the crimes committed by the applicant, the challenged decree did not disproportionately infringe the right to respect for his private life guaranteed by Article 8 of the ECHR.

The claimant is a stateless person whose Romanian nationality was withdrawn by the National Citizenship Authority (“Autoritatea Nationala a Cetateniei”) on the grounds that he is known to have links with terrorist groups or has supported, in any form, or has committed other acts that endanger national security. Romania law provides that in such cases, the order issued by the National Citizenship Authority can be appealed in court, and the decision issued by this court is final and irrevocable. The claimant raises an objection of unconstitutionality with regard to this law, because it violates the principle of the double degree of jurisdiction provided for in the EU law in criminal matters, assimilating the matter in question with a criminal matter as defined by the EU law.

The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) allowed an appeal against the Secretary of State’s decision to deprive C3, C4 and C7 of their British citizenship, and found that the decision to deprive C3, C4 and C7 of their citizenship breached s.40(4) of the British Nationality Act 1981, as it would render the appellants stateless. On the date of the deprivation decision, it was found that C3, C4 and C7 did not have Bangladeshi citizenship under the law of Bangladesh and the Secretary of State therefore could not deprive them of their British citizenship.