On Citizenship of Ukraine Про громадянство України | |
---|---|
Verkhovna Rada | |
Citation | 2235-III |
Territorial extent | Ukraine |
Enacted by | 3rd Verkhovna Rada |
Passed | 18 January 2001[1] |
Signed by | President of Ukraine |
Commenced | 1 March 2001 |
Related legislation | |
Constitution of Ukraine | |
Status: Amended |
Ukrainian nationality law details the conditions by which a person holds nationality of Ukraine. The primary law governing nationality requirements is the Law on Citizenship of Ukraine, which came into force on 1 March 2001. Any person born to a Ukrainian citizen parent, both within the country or abroad, automatically receives Ukrainian citizenship by birth. Foreign nationals may naturalize after living in the country for at least five years and showing proficiency in the Ukrainian language.
Terminology
The distinction between the meaning of the terms citizenship and nationality is not always clear in the English language and differs by country. Generally, nationality refers a person's legal belonging to a state and is the common term used in international treaties when referring to members of a state; citizenship refers to the set of rights and duties a person has in that nation.[2]
In the Soviet context, nationality was used to describe ethnicity rather than the population of a state.[3] Soviet citizenship law was extremely permissive and allowed virtually any person in the world to become a Soviet citizen with no specific requirements.[4] Union Republics in the late Soviet era used differing methods to delineate their new national constituencies, based largely on the majority ethnic composition of that polity.[5] In Ukraine, the post-Soviet definition of national membership relies on a link to the territorial bounds of the modern state by birth, permanent residence, or close family connection. Any person who fell within that definition became part of the Ukrainian nation.[6]
History
Ukrainian People's Republic
The Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) established Ukrainian citizenship for the first time when it adopted citizenship laws on 2 and 4 March 1918, just as Soviet Russia recognized the UPR's independence under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The laws instituted jus soli, prohibited dual citizenship, and required "registration of citizenship through the process of proving one's right to citizenship through witnesses." The legislation was vulnerable to "undemocratic" abuse, and many provisions were "incorrectly formulated" so as to make compliance impossible. Therefore, the Central Council planned a revision.[7]
The German-backed Ukrainian State seized control in April and adopted a law based on the UPR's proposed changes on 2 July.[7][8][9] This law claimed as citizens all Russian subjects who resided in Ukraine and did not formally reject Ukrainian citizenship.[8][9] The UPR resumed power in December.[10] The autonomous Western Oblast of the UPR, whose territory remained in dispute with Poland, saw citizenship legislation enacted on 8 April 1919. This law likewise conferred citizenship on everyone who belonged to one of the oblast's communities and who did not reject it.[9][11]
Poland occupied most of the Western Oblast's territory by July, and the UPR recognized the territory as part of Poland in April 1920.[12][13] In September of the same year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the UPR, then in exile in Tarnów, stated in a letter that the Ukrainian State citizenship law remained valid.[9] By November, the UPR had decisively lost the last of its territory, which was divided in 1921 between Poland, Soviet Russia, and the Ukrainian SSR.[14][15]
Soviet Union
The Ukrainian SSR became a founding republic of the Soviet Union in 1922.[16] The 1924 Soviet Union constitution affirmed "single Union citizenship" for the citizens of all Union republics.[17] The 1929 Ukrainian SSR constitution stated that all Ukrainian SSR citizens were also Union citizens.[18] Successive Soviet constitutions maintained this arrangement.[19][20][21][22][23]
Soviet Ukraine signed the Convention on the Nationality of Married Women in 1957 and ratified it the next year.[24]
The 1978 Soviet Union citizenship law delegated to the presidiums of the supreme soviets of the Union republics the authority to grant republican citizenship—and thereby Union citizenship—to resident non-citizens.[25] A 1981 decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR provided for naturalization in this way.[26] This procedure "applied to non-Soviet citizens only and not to Soviet citizens who moved from one Soviet republic to another."[19]
The Ukrainian SSR, like other Union republics, neither made laws on nor administered its own citizenship. Soviet law did not provide for documentation of republican citizenship. Thus, Ukrainian SSR citizenship had no practical consequences and its existence was dubious.[19]
Independent Ukrainian citizenship and the end of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union allowed the Union republics to make laws to govern their own citizenships beginning May 1990.[27] The Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, adopted 16 July, established Ukrainian SSR citizenship independent of and alongside Union citizenship, and envisaged further legislation to govern the acquisition and loss of this new citizenship.[28][29][30] Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union on 24 August 1991.[31]
In the Verkhovna Rada, factions of nationalists, unreformed Communists, and the former nomenklatura in power supported different citizenship policies. The nationalists wanted citizenship for all ethnic Ukrainians. The Communists desired no independent citizenship or, when the collapse of the Soviet Union loomed, dual citizenship with Russia. Both nationalists and the nomenklatura disfavored dual citizenship. They feared that Russia would grant its own citizenship to Ukrainian citizens to justify intervention in Ukraine on behalf of Russian dual citizens. The first citizenship legislation resulted from compromise between these three factions.[32][33]
The Law on the Succession of Ukraine, which took effect on 5 October, extended citizenship only to Soviet citizens with permanent residence in Ukraine as of independence.[34] The first Citizenship Law entered into force on 13 November.[35] This Law allowed those born in Ukraine or with parents or grandparents born in Ukraine to register for citizenship, and neither prohibited nor protected multiple citizenship.[36] Its preamble proscribed deprivation of citizenship, or denaturalization as the Soviet authorities had deployed "against the enemies of Soviet power", as well as deprivation of the right to change citizenship.[37][38][39] The following month, the Soviet Union dissolved.
Since independence
The 1978 Ukrainian SSR constitution remained in effect but the Verkhovna Rada removed references to Soviet Union citizenship effective 18 July 1992.[40][41][42] Ukraine ratified a new constitution on 28 June 1996 that banned deprivation of citizenship and of the right to change citizenship.[43]
From 1991 to 2005, Ukraine repeatedly expanded the grounds on which people anywhere could register for citizenship by birth on or through relatives born on Ukrainian or formerly Ukrainian territory.[6] To defend its own "compatriots abroad", Russia campaigned from 1993 to 1997 for multiple citizenship in other post-Soviet states including Ukraine.[44][45] Though some in Ukraine favored Russia's efforts, the authorities continued to oppose them.[45] Restrictions on multiple citizenship tightened in the late 1990s but softened in the subsequent decade.[46]
To reduce dual citizenship in cases of naturalization, Ukraine formed agreements with other post-Soviet states to establish a simplified, free-of-charge procedure to change citizenship from one country's to the other's.[47] Ukraine and Uzbekistan implemented the first such agreement in October 1998 and enabled some 28,000 formerly deported Crimean Tatars to switch from Uzbek to Ukrainian citizenship.[47][48] Though Russia and some other countries declined, Ukraine also concluded agreements with Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.[47] Some of these agreements later ended, and by 2017, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported only that such treaties remained in force with Belarus, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.[a][50]
In 2002, Ukraine acceded to the 1967 Protocol to the 1951 Refugee Convention, then to the Convention itself.[51][52] Ukraine signed the European Convention on Nationality in 2003 and ratified it in 2006.[53][54] That year, Ukraine also became the first country to sign the Council of Europe Convention on the Avoidance of Statelessness in Relation to State Succession, but never ratified it.[53][55] The country acceded to the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness in 2013.[56][57]
Definition of Ukrainian citizenship
Citizens of Ukraine typically fall into at least one of the following categories:
- Former citizens of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics who were permanently resident on the territory of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic at the moment of the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine on 24 August 1991.
- Stateless people, residing on the territory of Ukraine on 13 November 1991.
- People who came to Ukraine with the intent of taking up permanent residence since 13 November 1991 and who had the endorsement "Citizen of Ukraine" inserted into their 1974-type Soviet passport by Ukrainian authorities, as well as the children of such persons who arrived in Ukraine together with their parents, provided that they had not attained their majority before their entry to Ukraine.
- People who acquired Ukrainian citizenship in accordance with the laws of Ukraine and the international treaties of Ukraine.
Acquisition and loss of citizenship
Individuals automatically receive Ukrainian citizenship at birth if at least one parent is a Ukrainian citizen, whether they are born within Ukraine or overseas. Children born in the country but do not acquire any citizenship from their parents at birth (or only acquire citizenship of a country from which a parent has fled from as a recognized refugee) are also Ukrainian citizens by birth. Abandoned children are treated as if they were born to Ukrainian parents if their origin cannot be determined.[58]
Foreigners may naturalize as Ukrainian citizens after living in the country for a continuous period of at least five years. Applicants must have been issued an immigration permit, demonstrate proficiency in the Ukrainian language, and renounce any foreign nationalities. The residence requirement is reduced to two years if an applicant is married to a Ukrainian citizen, or if they hold refugee or asylum status.[59]
Citizens who are permanently domiciled abroad can voluntarily relinquish their Ukrainian citizenship by making a declaration of renunciation, provided that the declarant already possesses another citizenship or a legal document from a foreign state specifying that another citizenship will be granted on the loss of their Ukrainian citizenship. Recognition of an individual's overseas residence requires the completion of an administrative process to become a legal non-resident of Ukraine. This process is typically only done when outgoing emigrants leave the country with the express intention of permanent settlement abroad and is difficult to complete for citizens who departed on non-immigrant visas. Ukrainians who did not undergo this process before settlement overseas and who no longer possess documentation for propiska (legal residency) are in practice barred from successfully renouncing Ukrainian citizenship.[60]
Citizenship may be involuntarily deprived from individuals who acquire foreign citizenship without renouncing their Ukrainian citizenship, naturalized persons who fraudulently acquired Ukrainian citizenship, and those who voluntarily enter military service in another country without mandatory conscription. Loss of citizenship under these conditions does not occur automatically. The Ministry of Internal Affairs must formally present documentary evidence that individuals who fall under an applicable category already possesses a foreign nationality and all final decisions on deprivation must be approved by the President. The government rarely initiates this formal deprivation process due to its length and cost.[61]
Between 2005 and mid-2017, 87,376 people lost Ukrainian citizenship. The vast majority of them lost citizenship voluntarily or under facilitated procedures for citizenship changes through bilateral agreements with other countries. Only 333 people were involuntarily stripped of their citizenship during this period of time.[62]
Dual citizenship
According to the Constitution of Ukraine, Article 4, only one citizenship exists in Ukraine.[63][64] This does not explicitly deny dual (external) citizenship, so there are citizens of Ukraine who hold dual citizenship.[65][66] According to Article 19 of the Ukrainian Law on Citizenship the voluntary acquisition by a citizen of Ukraine of citizenship of another state is the basis for losing Ukrainian citizenship.[63]
Ukrainian law also states that, after a foreign citizen gains Ukrainian citizenship, he must renounce the non-Ukrainian citizenship(s) within two years.[67] A 2009 estimate put the number of Ukrainians with more than one passport from 300,000 to a few million.[68] Within Ukrainian borders, Ukrainian citizens who also hold other citizenships are considered to be solely Ukrainian citizens.[69]
If a citizen of Ukraine acquires citizenship (nationality) of another state or states, in legal relations with Ukraine, the person is recognized as a citizen of Ukraine only. If a foreigner acquires the citizenship of Ukraine, then in legal relations with Ukraine, the person is recognized as a citizen of Ukraine only...
— Article 2. Law on citizenship of Ukraine.
On 8 February 2014, the Verkhovna Rada proposed a bill to criminalize the act of holding two citizenships.[70]
On 20 December 2021, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill into law allowing dual citizenship.[71]
Visa requirements
In June 2017, Ukrainian citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 132 countries and territories, ranking the Ukrainian passport 42nd in the world according to the Visa Restrictions Index.
Notes
- ^ "Угода між Україною і Республікою Казахстан про спрощений порядок набуття і припинення громадянства громадянами України, які постійно проживають у Республіці Казахстан, та громадянами Республіки Казахстан, які постійно проживають в Україні, та запобігання випадкам безгромадянства та подвійного громадянства (... з 8 липня 2011 року Казахстанська сторона висловила позицію про визнання дії Угоди припиненою, оскільки загальний термін дії Угоди складає 10 років з моменту набуття нею чинності)...." [Agreement between Ukraine and the Republic of Kazakhstan on a simplified procedure for change of citizenship by citizens of Ukraine permanently resident in the Republic of Kazakhstan and by citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan permanently resident in Ukraine, and the prevention of cases of statelessness and dual citizenship (... the Kazakhstani side has expressed its position on the termination of the Agreement on 8 July 2011, since the overall term of the Agreement is 10 years from the moment of entry into force)....][49]
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