“IT’S heartbreaking to study,” said Shamima Begum in response to a letter from the Home Office telling her that her British citizenship has been revoked. Ms. Begum (pictured), born in Britain, left the U.S. S. Four years ago, an elderly 15 joined the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Using a journalist from the Times in a refugee camp closing month, Ms. Begum preferred to return to Britain. That request has been denied. The case proves arguably, with suggestions from a few quarters, that Britain has violated universal law by leaving Ms. Begum stateless. When can governments revoke citizenship?

The practice isn’t new. In America, the Expatriation Act of 1907 eliminated a girl’s citizenship if she married a foreign man, and U. S. Used similar equipment at some stage in the 20th century toward Nazi collaborators, suspected spies, and other “un-American” residents. During the Second International War, the Vichy regime denaturalized 15,000 French citizens, many Jews. In 1967, America’s Supreme Court ruled that residents should handiest be denaturalized if their citizenship changed into fraudulently won—by concealing an involvement in past crimes, for instance. In recent years, a few countries have utilized the withdrawal of citizenship in the fight against terrorism to save jihadists from returning home. Many international locations reserve the right to put off citizenship if a person is treasonous in some manner: Denmark and Australia have finished so with IS combatants.