International experience
The idea of dual citizenship was born in the 1930s by the Haaga Convention. However, the first clause of this convention states that “dual citizenship is not preferable.” In addition to this, there are clauses that follow which talk about dual citizenship. According to those clauses, all issues concerning dual citizenship must be solved through the laws of the given country and the second country accepting dual citizenship. In the abovementioned convention, it is also stated that the dual citizen residing in the third country must represent himself as one citizen. According to another clause, the state can not defend its citizen’s rights if those rights are violated by a country of which that person is a citizen. The Haaga Convention was passed at a time when it was alright to consider the fact that an individual could be a citizen of only one country. However, the concept has changed within the past 10-15 years. Dual citizenship has spread around the world. Some people presume that there are more advantages to dual citizenship than there are disadvantages. Others are of the opinion that there is a less chance for war between two democratic countries that accept dual citizenship. At the present, there are many countries that force their citizens to reject citizenship of the given country if that person wants to become a citizen of another country. Today, Armenia also belongs to that list of countries. However, there are also countries that, on the contrary, encourage their citizens not to reject the given country’s citizenship. For example, it is very difficult for a person living in Greece to reject citizenship. Based on estimates, dual citizenship is accepted in 74 countries around the world, including the U.S., Russia, France, Great Britain, Turkey, Portugal, etc. However, there are countries in this list that don’t have any laws about dual citizenship but they also have no documents prohibiting it. For example, U.S. citizens sign an “oath of tolerance” in order to become a citizen and in the “oath” it is stated that the individual can not represent himself as a citizen of another country and must obey U.S. laws. Meanwhile, this is all just a formality because the U.S. “tolerates” dual citizenship. At the present, there are 110 countries in the world that prohibit dual citizenship, including Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Rumania, Mexico, Norway, India, China, etc.
Armenian reality
The constitutional amendments packet put up for the referendum proposes taking out the clause prohibiting dual citizenship and defends the rights and responsibilities of dual citizens by law. The thing that worries people against this is that in this case, dual citizens will have the right to vote and be elected and it is quite possible that the non-resident of Armenia and the Armenian dual citizen each have a chance to be elected in the future elections for authorities.
Representatives of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), in particular Spartak Seyranyan, calm these people down by stating the fact that, according to the future law about dual citizenship, dual citizens will take advantage of their right to vote if they have lived an “X” number of years (the “X” will be clarified in the law) in Armenia. We must mention the fact, however, that we can not deny the dual citizen’s right to be elected as president of Armenia with the abovementioned law, due to the fact that, according to the 50th article stated in the existing constitution, “the president of Armenia is elected for a five year term by the people.” Any law that goes against the constitution is not acceptable. It turns out that the coalition representatives, who are also the authors of the new constitution, are indirectly stating that they are getting ready to violate the newly amended constitution, but unfortunately these “minor details” are no surprise to anyone. In any case, what is the meaning of taking out the clause prohibiting the dual citizenship and what’s in it for the country? This and other questions were answered during an interview with the representative of the ARF’s political issues bureau and correspondent of the Armenian Assembly’s Yerevan Branch Kiro Manoyan a couple of days ago. He clarified that the constitutional clause prohibiting dual citizenship was being taken out because after all, Armenia is the Homeland for all Armenians, not just the Armenians living in Armenia. Besides that, the clause will give the country the opportunity to solve some “national issues”. According to Kiro Manoyan, the number of people who have left Armenia in the past couple of years ranges from 1-1.5 million. “Those people have been living outside of Armenia for a long time already and they probably need to get citizenship. But the country where they are living in does not allow that,” says Kiro and adds that according to data, 5,000 Armenian citizens living in Moscow have refused to become Armenian citizenship. “I think that this is the first issue that needs to be solved after dual citizenship is passed. We need to stop losing citizens,” says the correspondent for the Armenian Assembly’s Yerevan branch. In addition, in his words, the number of Armenian citizens will increase and instead of having 3 million citizens, Armenia will have 9 million. This number may even reach the billions because we don’t know how we will deny an Uzbek living in the city of Barbados, Portugal from becoming a citizen after we pass the dual citizenship law-just because he is non-Armenian? This kind of discrimination by the state in the 21st century may have its side effects.
Anyway, one thing is for sure: debates continue and there are still no plain answers to questions such as which country will Armenian dual citizens pay taxes to, etc.