Editing Right of return (section)

==="His own country"===
The landmark [[International Court of Justice]] case the [[Nottebohm case]] of 1955 is often cited as staking out more criteria as to what "one's country" should be.<ref name="bracka"/> The court ruled that there needed to be a "genuine and effective" link between the individual and the country. Among the criteria listed for such a link were "a close and enduring connection", "tradition", "establishment", "interests" and "family ties". The 1955 ruling has been supplanted by more recent conventions and court rulings.

There is some disagreement<ref name="bracka">Bracka, Jeremie Maurice. [http://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/1681169/Bracka.pdf "Past the Point of no Return? The Palestinian Right of Return in International Human Rights Law"], ''Melbourne Journal of International Law'', Melbourne, 2005</ref> as to what "his own" and "his country" means in the ICCPR and UDHR. According to the [[United Nations Human Rights Committee]]'s authoritative interpretation from 1999:

{{blockquote|The scope of "his own country" is broader than the concept "country of his nationality". It is not limited to nationality in a formal sense, that is, nationality acquired at birth or by conferral; it embraces, at the very least, an individual who, because of his or her special ties to or claims in relation to a given country, cannot be considered to be a mere alien. This would be the case, for example, of nationals of a country who have been stripped of their nationality in violation of international law, and of individuals whose country of nationality has been incorporated in or transferred to another national entity, whose nationality is being denied them. The right of a person to enter his or her own country recognizes the special relationship of a person to that country&nbsp;... It includes not only the right to return after having left one’s own country; it may also entitle a person to come to the country for the first time if he or she was born outside the country.<ref name="hrc27">UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), ''[http://www.refworld.org/docid/45139c394.html HRC in General Comment 27 CCPR General Comment No. 27: Article 12 (Freedom of Movement)]'', 2 November 1999, CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.9</ref>}}

According to Agterhuis, the record of negotiations - the [[travaux préparatoires]] - of the ICCPR reveals that the wording of article 12(4) was changed from "the right to ''return'' to one's country" to "the right to ''enter'' one's country" was made in order to include nationals or citizens born outside the country and who have never lived therein.<ref name = "agterhuis">{{cite web|url=https://prrn.mcgill.ca/research/papers/agterhuis.pdf|title=The right to Return and its Practical Application|author=Sander Agterhuis}}</ref>