A/HRC/36/30 have nationality of the country of family’s residence, or their lack of access to higher education or work permits. Those scenarios may undermine children’s right not to be separated from their parents against their will. 23 IV. Law reforms to ensure women’s equal nationality rights 19. In its resolution 32/7, the Human Rights Council urged States to take immediate steps to reform nationality laws that discriminated 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. 24 20. Experts and participants recommended a number of measures to guarantee women’s equal rights in nationality laws. With regard to the acquisition, change or retention of nationality, they recommended that States: (a) ensure that marriage to a foreigner or a change to the husband’s nationality during marriage would not automatically change the nationality of the wife, force her to take the nationality of the husband or put her at risk of statelessness; (b) ensure that a woman who had acquired nationality on the basis of marriage to a national did not lose that nationality in the event of dissolution of the marriage, or death of the spouse, unless requested along with proof of alternate nationality submitted by the affected woman herself; (c) introduce safeguards to nationality laws to ensure that any loss of nationality was applicable equally to women and men and conditional upon the possession or acquisition of another nationality; and (d) allow women and men whose marriage had been dissolved to reacquire their former nationality automatically through a simple declaration in cases where automatically they lost or had to renounce their nationality when they married. 21. With regard to women’s ability to confer their nationality on their children and spouses, experts and participants recommended that States: (a) ensure that women may confer nationality on their children and their foreign spouses on the same basis as men; and (b) not distinguish between children born in and out of wedlock with regard to birth registration and the acquisition of nationality, and make laws, policies and regulations consistent. 22. They also recommended that those States that have not done so ratify international treaties that prohibit gender discrimination in relation to the right to nationality, 25 including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, without reservations to article 9 and other provisions of the Convention that impede women’s enjoyment of nationality rights on the same basis as men. 23. In addition, States may consider providing safeguards against statelessness and the lack of full enjoyment of human rights due to statelessness, including by: (a) taking measures to facilitate the transmission of nationality to the children and spouses of women who had become stateless or lost their nationality before reformed laws came into force, possibly including by applying the reformed law retrospectively to eliminate statelessness; (b) facilitating, in accordance with their national laws, the acquisition of nationality by children born in their territories or to their nationals abroad who would otherwise be stateless; (c) considering the recognition of dual nationality for children born to parents from different nationalities and for spouses married to foreigners and residing in the State of the spouse who expressed their wish to acquire the nationality of their spouse without losing their nationality of origin; (d) guaranteeing the full enjoyment of human rights for non-national family members, in particular the rights to education, enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health, work, property, freedom of residence and freedom from violence (access to timely and effective administrative and judicial remedies should be also available to them); (e) combating human trafficking, including through the identification of potential victims of trafficking and the provision of appropriate assistance to stateless 23 See Convention on the Rights of the Child, art. 9. See Human Rights Council resolution 32/7, para. 5. 25 For more details of legal frameworks on non-discrimination against women in nationality laws, see A/HRC/23/23, paras. 8-18. 24 6

Select target paragraph3