Access to nationality for women and girls essential for achieving gender equality and development: UN expert

NEW YORK (3 October 2023) – Almost 50 countries in the world continue to keep nationality laws that contain gender-discriminatory provisions in their statute books, a UN expert warned today.

“In 24 countries, women are denied the right to confer nationality on their children on an equal basis with men,” said Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls.

In a report presented to the UN General Assembly, Alsalem said sex and gender-based discrimination in nationality laws was one of the major causes of statelessness and mutually reinforce each other. The gendered consequences for women and girls remain underexplored and underappreciated, she said.

“Statelessness and gender discriminatory nationality laws are tantamount to violence against women, resulting in a vicious circle of human rights failures,” the Special Rapporteur said.

These include but are not limited to: obstacles in registering births and conferring nationality to children; increased exposure to human rights violations, including by being forced to remain in abusive relationships; hampering access to essential services and complicating custody of children; and limited protection and participation in society.

Alsalem’s report observed that gender-discriminatory nationality laws and statelessness may share common root causes, such as patriarchal values, exertion of demographic control, intersecting forms of discrimination against minority women, and administrative bottlenecks for birth registration or acquisition of nationality.

International and regional human rights treaties provide for the right of women to acquire, change or retain nationality and to confer nationality to their children on an equal basis with men. The expert called on States to uphold the principles and obligations of fundamental human rights and lift reservations to relevant articles of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Alsalem also acknowledged the efforts by a number of States and stakeholders in amending gender-discriminatory nationality laws, improving inclusivity and accessibility of statelessness determination procedures, developing comprehensive civil registration systems and incorporating statelessness data in national statistics.

“The reforms and good practices demonstrate that removing gender-discriminatory nationality laws and ending statelessness is doable and within our reach through rights-based strategies and political commitments,” Alsalem said.

The expert also called for reforms to national legislation; accession to the Conventions on statelessness; the collection of comparable disaggregated data on stateless populations; strengthened advocacy campaigns in partnership with religious and community leaders to provide effective pathways to citizenship; and ensuring women’s independent right to civil documentation and registration.

ENDS