“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to study,” said Shamima Begum in response to a letter from the Home Office telling her that her British citizenship has been revoked.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 u . S. Four years ago, elderly 15, to join the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Located using a journalist from the Times in a refugee camp closing month, Ms. Begum expressed a preference to go back 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 towards Nazi collaborators, suspected spies, and other “un-American” residents. During the second international war, the Vichy regime denaturalized 15,000 French citizens, lots of them Jews. In 1967 America’s Supreme Court dominated that residents should handiest be denaturalized if their citizenship changed into fraudulently won—by way of concealing an involvement in past crimes, for instance. In recent years, the withdrawal of citizenship has been utilized by a few countries inside the fight towards terrorism to save you jihadists from returning home. Many international locations reserve the proper to put off citizenship if a person is treasonous in some manner: Denmark and Australia have finished so with IS combatants.