Costica Dumbrava has raised an important question about whether to abandon ius sanguinis citizenship. His arguments are that ius sanguinis is historically tainted and unfit to deal with contemporary issues such as developments in reproductive technologies and changes in family practices and norms. He also claims that ius sanguinis is normatively unnecessary, as it is possible to deliver its advantages by other means. In my response I argue that – from a human rights perspective – children need their parents’ citizenship – or rather, the citizenship of their primary caretakers, be they biological parents or not. Consequently, although I concur with the argument that ius sanguinis, if taken literally, is unfit to deal with some new family arrangements, I do not endorse the viewpoint that it is time to abandon ius sanguinis. Rather, ius sanguinis should be translated into ius filiationis by entitling children to their social parents’ citizenship. In order to achieve mutual understanding about this, states should engage in international cooperation with a view to adopting common guidelines on the recognition of the legal parent-child relationship –as happens already with regard to adoption.
for Human Rights. 1 See, for instance, Lars Jørgensen 2006, p. 141; the then chairman of the Danish Refugee Council called it 'the most human of its kind in the world' (FTF (the offi cial report of the parliamentary proceedings) 1984-85, sp. 376).
This chapter gives an account of the Danish turn towards dual citizenship, which began after the start of the new millennium and ended in December 2014 with the adoption of an act on dual-citizenship acceptance that entered into force on 01 September 2015. The chapter examines the Danish path towards dual citizenship from a legal and political perspective and argues that the idea of dual-citizenship acceptance matured gradually in the context of international and Nordic interdependence. Thus, the Danish approach resembles that of most other countries. I argue that the Danish slowness in terms of dual-citizenship acceptance is not a reflection of a Danish particularity but, rather, reflects an extraordinary political constellation in the Danish parliament during the first decade of the new millennium. Hereby, I dissociate myself from claims in the comparative literature that the opportunity to strip Danish dual citizens of their Danish citizenship was a key argument for Denmark’s turn towards dual citizenship.
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