A/HRC/36/30 persons who may be victims of trafficking, paying particular attention to the needs and vulnerabilities of trafficked women and children; and (f) ratifying relevant international treaties, including the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. 24. In addition to the reform of nationality laws, reform of other laws may be needed to fully guarantee women’s equal enjoyment of nationality rights. For example, laws and policies that required women to have third-party authorization in order to gain access to civil documents undermined women’s full enjoyment of their nationality rights. Laws and policies should be reformed to guarantee women’s independent and autonomous access, regardless of their marital status, to civil documents for themselves and their children, including birth and marriage certificates, passports and other nationality documents. 25. Certain provisions of family laws or criminal laws may hinder the enjoyment of nationality rights of women and their families and thus may need to be amended. For example, the non-recognition of interreligious marriage could lead to women refraining from registering their children at birth.26 The criminalization of sex out of wedlock may discourage women from registering their children born out of wedlock. 27 V. Strategies for a successful nationality law reform 26. The experts and participants at the workshop shared experiences on nationality law reform and deliberated on strategies to achieve successful reform. A summary is included below of the recommended strategies based on good practices across the world. However, it was noted that, ultimately, a careful assessment of the unique opportunities and challenges present in each country must guide all attempts at reform. 27. As strategies for Governments, the following recommendations were made: (a) Existing domestic laws, such as the Constitution, Personal and Family Codes, and Children’s Codes, as well as international treaties ratified by the State, may already provide for non-discriminatory nationality rights for men and women. A review of the consistency and coherence of domestic laws may provide a rationale for a reform of nationality laws.28 In such cases, aligning nationality laws with other laws that guarantee non-discrimination would clarify applicable legal standards and secure consistent application of equal nationality rights for men and women by national and local officials and judiciary; (b) Strong political leadership at a high level was crucial to leading law reform. Several successful nationality law reform processes, including those in Algeria, Madagascar, Morocco and Senegal, had benefited from the commitment and leadership of the highest levels of government.29 Likewise, a multisectoral approach led by such highlevel leadership had been found useful. Intersectoral coordination mechanisms could be established bringing on board a wide range of line ministries that may have relevant mandates, such as ministries responsible for access to justice, education and health care, 26 See Equal Rights Trust, My Children’s Future: Ending Gender Discrimination in Nationality Laws (London, 2015), p. 18. Laws that deny women’s ability to choose a spouse freely, such as prohibitions on interreligious marriage, themselves constitute discrimination against women (see, for example, article 16 of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women). 27 The Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice has maintained that adultery as a criminal offence violates women’s human rights, stating that “international human rights jurisprudence established that criminalization of sexual relations between consenting adults is a violation of their right to privacy and infringement of article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”. See http://newsarchive.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=12672&LangID=E. 28 Experience of Algeria, Indonesia and Somalia shared by the experts. 29 Experience of Algeria, Madagascar, Morocco and Senegal, shared by the experts at the workshop. See also UNHCR, “Good Practices Paper - Action 3: Removing Gender Discrimination from Nationality Laws” (2015), available from www.refworld.org/pdfid/54f8377d4.pdf. 7