11 Nils Muižnieks, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, explains here just how straightforward it is to end statelessness for children born on European soil.81 Without needing to entirely overhaul the way in which European states regulate access to nationality, children could be protected from statelessness by a simple fall-back provision based on jus soli (place of birth).82 The challenge is that Europe strongly favours a descent-based approach to the conferral of nationality to children at birth – i.e. in general, the jus sanguinis principle holds sway in the region. While this helps to ensure that “children born to European parents anywhere in the world are at minimal risk of statelessness, [it also] fosters the assumption that children born to non-European nationals in Europe should be citizens of elsewhere, leaving some of those children at risk of statelessness”.83 As discussed in detail in this section, even where states have safeguards in place to prevent statelessness among children born in their territory, these are not always fully inclusive. In some cases, the too-narrow safeguards evidence a lack of understanding of when statelessness can arise – reflecting, indeed, the assumption that a child born to a foreign national will always be able to inherit that foreign nationality. In other cases, states impose additional requirements that stem from other, e.g. public policy concerns, that are infiltrating and impinging on the question of children’s enjoyment of the right to a nationality. THE IMPORTANCE OF NATIONALITY LAW SAFEGUARDS FOR OTHERWISE STATELESS CHILDREN The most obvious scenario for which it is vital to have a provision in place to allow children to acquire nationality by jus soli, even if that is not the main route under the law, is where the parents are stateless – relevant in Europe given the existing scale of the problem of statelessness in the region. In such cases, sole reliance on jus sanguinis conferral of nationality would lead to the perpetuation of statelessness to the next generation and be contrary to the right of every child to acquire a nationality. Thus, already under the 1930 Hague Convention on certain questions relating to the conflict of nationality laws, states were obliged to confer nationality to children born on the territory of parents having no nationality or of unknown nationality.84 However, such a safeguard fails to account for the circumstance where the child’s parent(s) do hold a nationality themselves, but are unable to pass this on. This is the case for mothers, for instance, who are nationals of one of the 27 countries worldwide that do not respect the right of women to confer nationality to their children on equal terms with men.85 Children of single mothers from these countries face the threat of statelessness.86 Under the nationality law and practice of some countries, where children born out of wedlock may face difficulties inheriting citizenship from either their mother or father.87 More generally, it is not uncommon for states to limit, in various ways, the transmission of nationality jus sanguinis where children are born outside the country of the parents’ nationality. Canada, for example, amended its law in 2008 and now only allows the first generation born to Canadian parents abroad to acquire Canadian nationality.88 Other countries require additional conditions to be fulfilled for access to nationality for children born overseas.89 These may be registration requirements which are usually relatively straightforward to complete – except for refugees, who would expose themselves or their family members in the country of origin to protection risks by approaching their consulate. Or the law may stipulate that the child must return and reside in the country of the parents’ nationality in order to acquire citizenship. THE CHALLENGE OF SAFEGUARDING THE RIGHT TO NATIONALITY FOR CHILDREN OF REFUGEES Children born to refugees, in exile, are particularly susceptible to problems in securing a nationality.90 Some refugees are stateless prior to their flight – their statelessness may even be a factor in their displacement, as a marker of or catalyst for the persecution that they suffer.91 Statelessness can also follow as a consequence of displacement, for instance due to laws that provide for loss of nationality on the basis of long-term residence abroad, even if no new nationality has been acquired.92 In such cases, refugee parents have no nationality to transmit, such that their children are reliant on the country of birth to acquire a nationality at birth. It is therefore particularly important that refugee receiving states have safeguards in place to ensure that stateless children born on their territory acquire a nationality. Yet, the vulnerability of children of refugees to statelessness is not restricted to children of stateless refugees. Many refugees in Europe come from countries with problematic nationality legislation. Syria, for instance, discriminates against women in its nationality law and does not allow Syrian citizen mothers to confer nationality to their children. This puts a child born to a Syrian refugee mother and unknown, absent or deceased father at risk of statelessness – even though the mother does hold a nationality herself. In other cases, additional requirements must be met by a child born outside the parents’ country of nationality in order to inherit that nationality. Colombia, for example, makes acquisition of nationality by children born abroad conditional on the completion of a consular registration process, which refugee parents may not be in a position to fulfil due to the protection risks that this can entail. Other states, such as Cuba, stipulate conditions relating to residence in the country by the child before nationality is acquired.93 Furthermore, children born during the passage to the country of refuge and unaccompanied minors can also face the risk of statelessness.94 And refugees are among the groups which have been found to face difficulties in accessing birth registration for their children, which can further complicate the task of accessing a nationality for such children.95 On the Southern perimeter of Europe, another challenge has emerged in relation to refugees arriving by sea. With conflicts flaring across the Middle East, parts of North