Master Nationality Rule
consequence of League of Nations convention
The Master Nationality Rule is a consequence of Article 4 of the Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws of 1930, a treaty ratified by twenty-three parties. This provides that "a State may not afford diplomatic protection to one of its nationals against a state whose nationality such person also possesses". It is a codification of customary international law and is generally "modern state practice" internationally.
In terms of practical effect, it means that when a multiple citizen is in the country of one of their nationalities, that country has the right to treat that person as if they were solely a citizen or national of that country. This includes the right to impose military service obligations or require an exit visa to leave.
Recent history
In 2006, the International Law Commission adopted draft Articles on Diplomatic Protection, largely codifying established practice, which in general reaffirmed the rule. However it sought to ease the strictness of traditional practice with a proposal that where the nationality of a protecting state is "predominant", diplomatic protection may be given. These draft Articles have not been submitted to a conference to formalize them into a treaty. The draft Article 7 states:
A State of nationality may not exercise diplomatic protection in respect of a person against a State of which that person is also a national unless the nationality of the former State is predominant, both at the date of injury and at the date of the official presentation of the claim.
Eileen Denza, Professor of International Law at University College London and a former Legal Adviser in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, states that the rule is a codification of a "classic rule", and as of 2018, remains "modern state practice" internationally.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6785070. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1930, 2006 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Master Nationality Rule” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.