Statelessness Working Paper Series No. 2016/05 development, it per se constitutes a robust moment of addressing statelessness at the policy and EU level within its own borders which finally gives the EU a solid basis and credibility to strengthen its engagement in pursuing such endeavors beyond EU territory. 3.3. Institutional, legal, quasi-legal and policy instruments of EU external human rights action Throughout the recent years, the EU has developed an explicit engagement in promoting the right to a nationality; it has started to increasingly address the issue by including it in its human rights action plans (as political documents), guidelines,61 as well as it has raised the issue of statelessness at the multilateral level as well, primarily by making a pledge at the UN towards its own Member States. Nonetheless, the EU has not yet incorporated the advocacy and mainstreaming of the rights of stateless persons in its external relations in a consistent manner. It may be assumed that the EU could and should be able to address third countries to join the cause of reducing statelessness within their own territories, pass legislative reforms of biased nationality laws and eventually sign and duly implement the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions. Further to that, implementing CRC and CEDAW, as well as lifting the reservations made relating to them would be all necessary to duly implement the objectives of the Statelessness Conventions, considering that they guarantee the right of every child to have a nationality62 and the right of every woman to be able to confer their nationality on their children.63 In terms of EU foreign policy, the distinguished roles of the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the EU Special Representative for Human Rights are of utmost importance, as they can speak on behalf of the EU referring to all relevant UN Conventions (1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions, CEDAW, CRC, ICCPR) as platforms for advocacy. They have the mandate to address third-countries and engage them in proactive, high-level dialogue on the issue of statelessness, including making joint declarations with other leaders of international/regional organizations (Council of Europe, African Union, Arab League) on the occasion of statelessness-related events and addressing top-level government officials of the concerned state actors responsible for nationality law-making. Similarly, the Council’s Working Party on Human Rights (also referred to as the COHOM) has an outstanding role in supporting the Council’s decision-making process on the EU’s external human rights engagements. COHOM is in charge of the identification of relevant strategic human rights priorities and coordination of Member States’ position on issues of concern in multilateral human rights fora, including the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).64 Within the Council, COHOM together with the Council’s working party on fundamental rights (FREMP) are the primary EU bodies to establish greater policy coherence and consistency in the EU’s internal and external human rights policy. Therefore, COHOM would have the mandate to make recommendations on specific external statelessness-related policy actions to the Council. Besides, an EU human rights guideline on statelessness determination could be equally put forward by COHOM,65 and used as reference tool for statelessness advocacy with third countries. Driven by the same purpose, the European Commission could initiate the adoption of a legally binding EU Directive on statelessness determination procedures obliging all EU Member States to put in place good practices among Member States, NGOs and international organisations. See more: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/homeaffairs/what-we-do/networks/european_migration_network/index_en.htm. 61 E.g: EU Guidelines on human rights dialogues with non-EU countries, available at: http://eeas.europa.eu/human_rights/guidelines/dialogues/docs/16526_08_en.pdf. 62 Article 7 CRC. 63 Article 9 CEDAW. 64 See: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/council-eu/preparatory-bodies/working-party-human-rights/. 65 COHOM is also in charge of EU human rights guidelines. 7