CYIL vol. 9 (2018)

IVANA JELIĆ CYIL 9 ȍ2018Ȏ Science, University of Montenegro. Her research interest is focused on international human rights and minority rights protection, with an emphasize to the issue of implementation of civil and political rights, international responsibility and multiculturalism. She was a member of the UN Human Rights Committee as of 2015, and its Vice Chair as of 2017. She is a member of the Committee on Legal Studies of Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts as of 2014. She serves as an expert of the Council of Europe for the Advisory Committee on the FCNM as of 2012. She authored three monographs, several international book chapters, two handbooks in co-authorship, and about ninety scientific papers in national and international publications. Introduction Citizenship as a legal link between a state and an individual is one of human rights, which is very much dependent on national laws not only in terms of its implementation but also in prescribing rules on its acquisition. In times of multiculturalism and the development of the freedom of movement of persons, it is often brought to the attention of questioning, especially in the states which have passed through political and economic transition. Being a very sensitive legal and political issue, which largely depends on a state policy, in the states that emerged after the dissolution of the former federations, as is the case with the successor states of the former Federal Socijalist Republic of Yugoslavia, additional question arises as to how the rules on succession relate to citizenship. Thematic commentary No. 4 on the scope of application of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) by the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention (ACFC) concluded that „in a number of regions in Europe, persons belonging to minorities have lost their citizenship or even become stateless due to the creation of new states, despite having long-lasting ties to their places of residence. 1 Also, the large number of refugees and internally displaced persons from the context of armed conflicts in the territory of the Western Balkans made the issue of the right to citizenship even more complicated. This is also due to the fact that the international legal framework concerned is very modest and does not provide a legally binding solutions, dealing more with this right at the level of the principle regarding the respect of human rights. The explanation for such a situation in international law probably lies in the fact that legally binding international provisions in the context of the right to citizenship would imply a certain limitations of a state sovereignty, to which the states are still not ready, as they were not either in the time of adoption of the text of the ICCPR. 2 Another issue from this context is statelessness. It is a major problem for the contemporary international community, and efforts to reduce it are numerous, though not yet effective, to the extent that it requires the protection of human dignity and security. 3 In multicultural countries, such as the ones of the Western Balkans region in which national minorities in one country are part of the majority nation of the neighboring countries, special attention is paid to the citizenship as human right, because the countries 1 The Framework Convention: a key tool to managing diversity through minority rights , Thematic commentary No. 4, Council of Europe, 2016, p.13, par. 30. 2 The adoption of the text of ICCPR was supposed to be a momentum for concretization of the principle right on citizenship from the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was not realized. 3 JELIĆ I.: Pravni položaj apatrida prema savremenom međunarodnom pravu. ( Legal Status of Stateless Person in Contemporary International Law ) In: Zbornik Pravnog fakulteta u Podgorici, Podgorica, 2012, pp. 16-23.

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