How Britain’s efforts to launder inequality in citizen rights contributed to a forgotten UNGA declaration

This article presents results from new research into United Nations (UN) documents from 1972 to 1985, demonstrating that UK efforts to launder inequality in citizen rights drove the proposal, drafting, and adoption of the 1985 UN General Assembly Declaration on the Human Rights of Individuals who are not Nationals of the Country in which they live (DHRN). The DHRN process began in 1972, as part of a UK response to Idi Amin’s Expulsion of Ugandan Asians, and was adopted without vote in 1985. Today’s six hierarchical categories of UK nationality emerged from efforts over this period to restrict entry to the United Kingdom of some UK citizens, on racial grounds. This article presents an example of how successive UK governments both used citizenship as a tool of international positioning and used international politics to launder inequality in citizen rights.