The Right to Citizenship under International Human Rights Law; a New Vision in the Age of Globalization

The Right to citizenship means individual’s right to have civil, political and economic rights. This right has been noticed by many human rights instruments, but no instruments contain the right to citizenship in general for all human being. This is why there are many homeless and stateless people in the world. The individual free right to citizenship emerges as an opponent for the sovereign authority of a states to granting nationality. So, states have always ignored to recognize the right to citizenship as a human right. globalization and international human rights instruments Explosion in the second half of the 20th century lead to more restriction of state sovereignty and enhanced individual’s significance in international system. The concept of the right to citizenship has been also affected by such evolutions. Thus, current post-nationalism approaches that caused the emergence of some concepts such as global citizenship and universal personhood, also lead to restriction of national sovereignty in the context of citizenship and developing the concept of citizenship. So, as a result the right to citizenship can be introduced as a human right; a right that has been consolidated and developed in the aftermath of globalization.