In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (‘UDHR’) declared the right to a nationality and the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of a nationality. Hannah Arendt’s early critique revealed that the membership of a political community, ie, citizenship, was crucial to having access to the full gamut of rights. The right to belong to a nation — to have a nationality — is thus perhaps the most important right. It is all the more significant since instances of deprivation of nationality have resurfaced across the world in recent times. However, neither the UDHR nor the other key human rights instruments provide for the enforcement of this right against states. This is a result of the conventional international law position on state sovereignty which translates into absolute discretion in regulating nationality. Scholars often rely on the 100 year old Permanent Court of International Justice advisory opinion, Nationality Decrees Issued in Tunis and Morocco, to support this argument. International law has significantly evolved in a century and reading nationality solely from the perspective of state sovereignty is no longer tenable as international human rights law imposes limits on state discretion in nationality matters