That took me back. I used to go to meetings of the student arm locally as a sixth former, & although I do not think there was a formal link I associate it in my mind with the Council for Education in World Citizenship which used to organise sixth form conferences in London which a group of us excited provincials attended one year
Re-reading the Declaration after all this time, the one bit that really took me by surprise was Article 15.1: Every one has the right to a nationality
Short & to the point. But it begs so many questions
A number of my friends have faced one of these questions – mostly because they were born in a place which was then a colony of the British Empire. Independence brought with it surprises, some of which were unwelcome, about what the new rules said was their nationality
Much later I also knew one boy who was born stateless: not Empire this time, but the decline in marriage & the increase in opportunities for young people to travel were responsible
But what is nationality?
It usually depends first & foremost on where (& when) one was born
Your two parents may come into it too, in the form of their legal relationship to each other & also, in turn, where (& when) they were born
Then grandparents may count too, even if it’s only one of them (the one in the male line)
And finally the rather more amorphous concepts of language, ethnicity, religion, culture, history & belonging may carry weight
But most of all, nationality demands a nation
Which is what the United Nations rather takes for granted
