The United Nations Development Program estimates that in Latvia, between 300,000 and 350,000 people need and desire language training. Current language tests are not standardized, so citizenship can depend on the assessment of a particular examiner. Citizenship documentation can also depend on one's ability to purchase a language certificate on the black market. Among the greatest obstacles to Russian-speakers wishing to attain the language proficiency necessary for citizenship are the lack of qualified teachers in predominantly Russian areas and a scarcity of new teaching materials for adult language learners. The former Soviet Union's unprecedented situation in terms of numbers of potential stateless people has highlighted the inadequacies of international laws regarding citizenship in cases of territorial change or state dissolution.
Citizenship can be a guarantor of basic human rights.
This is beyond the narrow conferral of diplomatic protection to citizens who sojourn abroad or even being a prerequisite to full participation in the political community. The granting or denial of citizenship has long been considered a sovereign prerogative, although many commentators have asserted that citizenship itself is a human right, citing Article 15 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Emerging international legal norms, reflected in the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, would oblige states specifically to protect the human rights of stateless persons and to avoid imposing other statuses that might expose residents to the vulnerabilities of being a non-national. The potential for large numbers of stateless persons, such as the 25 million Russians living outside Russia, should clearly be a serious concern of the international community. The deployment of Russian troops into Chechnya on 11 December caused a political and humanitarian crisis in the Russian Federation.