Developments from March 2024 to February 2025 In December 2024, the Senate of Malaysia passed a constitutional amendment bill to allow Malaysian women to confer nationality on their children born abroad, thereby granting women equal rights as men to confer nationality to children. Previously, such children could acquire Malaysian nationality only at the Federal Government’s discretion through registration before the age of 21 at a Malaysian consulate or the National Registration Department in Malaysia. However, the amendment is not retroactive and therefore does not address past violations. Additionally, it introduces three regressive provisions, including the removal of key safeguards for granting nationality to stateless children born in Malaysia and to foundlings. The constitutional reform will take effect upon receiving royal assent and being published in the Gazette. In Oman, Royal Decree No. 17/2025 replaced Royal Decree No. 38/2014 in 2025, easing naturalization conditions for children of Omani mothers and foreign fathers. Both laws restrict eligibility to cases where the mother is widowed, divorced, or abandoned by the foreign father. Previously, a ten-year waiting period applied in all cases. The new law reduces this to five years in case the mother was widowed or got divorced but keeps it at ten in case of abandonment. Similarly, the residency requirement, previously ten years, is now five for children of widowed or divorced mothers, while remaining ten for those abandoned. In Kuwait, amendments to the nationality law revoked a provision that allowed children born in Kuwait to a Kuwaiti mother and a foreign father—who was either deceased or divorced from the mother—to apply for nationality. As a result, the only remaining scenario in which a woman can confer nationality is if the child’s father is unknown or paternity is not established, and only once the child reaches the age of majority. This process remains discretionary. 8 U N H C R > B A C K G R O U N D N O T E O N G E N D E R E Q U A L I T Y, N AT I O N A L I T Y L A W S A N D S TAT E L E S S N E S S 2 0 2 5