The Right to a Nationality Women's Equal Nationality Rights in Law and in Practice

Calls upon all States to adopt and implement nationality legislation consistent with their obligations under international law, including with respect to the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls in nationality-related matters, and with a view to preventing and reducing statelessness;

Urges all States to refrain from enacting or maintaining discriminatory nationality legislation with a view to avoiding statelessness and loss of nationality, preventing vulnerability to human rights violations and abuses, decreasing the risk of exploitation and abuse, and promoting gender equality in the acquisition, change, retention or conferral of nationality;

Urges States to take immediate steps to reform nationality laws that discriminate against women by granting equal rights to men and women to confer nationality on their children and spouses and regarding the acquisition, change or retention of their nationality;

Urges States that have reformed nationality laws to ensure the effective implementation of the laws, including through awareness-raising and publicity, and gender-sensitive training of public officials, including judges and local leaders, and targeted outreach to civil society to engage relevant communities;

Urges States to ensure that men and women have equal access to documents used to prove nationality, in particular passports, identity documents and birth, and where relevant, marriage certificates;

Calls upon States to identify and remove physical, administrative, procedural and any other barriers, especially those targeting women, that impede access to registration of vital life events including birth, marriage and death registration, and including late registration and associated fees, paying due attention to, among others, barriers relating to poverty, age, disability, gender, nationality, displacement, illiteracy and detention contexts, and to persons in vulnerable groups, and to remove barriers to birth registration based on discrimination against unwed mothers;

Also calls upon States to ensure that effective and appropriate remedies are available to all persons, in particular women and children, whose right to a nationality has been violated, including restoration of nationality and expedient provision of documentary proof of nationality by the State responsible for the violation;

Encourages relevant special procedures of the Human Rights Council, including the Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice, as well as specialized agencies, funds and programmes, and United Nations entities, including the United Nations Children’s Fund and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, and invites treaty bodies, in coordination with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to address and highlight issues relating to the right to a nationality and statelessness within their mandates;

Encourages States to continue to raise these issues in the universal periodic review process;

Also encourages States to consider acceding to the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and other relevant international human rights conventions if they have not already done so;

Calls upon States to implement their international legal obligations to combat human trafficking, including the identification of potential victims of trafficking and the provision of appropriate assistance to stateless persons who may be victims of trafficking, paying particular attention to the needs and vulnerabilities of trafficked women and children;

Calls upon all States to ensure that all persons, regardless of their nationality status, enjoy their human rights and fundamental freedoms;

Encourages States to facilitate, in accordance with their national laws, the acquisition of nationality by children born on their territories or to their nationals abroad who would otherwise be stateless;

Urges States to take concrete action to ensure the full and effective implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcomes of its reviews, and to ensure non-discrimination under the law, including with respect to nationality;

Encourages States to address women’s equal nationality rights, and the challenge of statelessness and vulnerability that emerges when they are not fully respected and implemented, when developing, implementing and monitoring national plans of action or other relevant mechanisms for the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, recognizing the need to ensure gender equality and empowerment of women and girls and to provide legal identity for all; and encourages development actors to support the capacity of Governments to implement these efforts;

Also encourages States to develop and implement national plans of action to end statelessness, taking into account the guidance set forth in the global 10-year campaign to end statelessness by 2024 of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and further encourages the Office to provide technical assistance to support these efforts, if requested and as appropriate;

Requests the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in coordination with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees: