The international legal framework and standards for birth registration and prevention of childhood statelessness 2. The State has no discretion to refuse the grant of nationality; and 3. The parents are able to register the child as a national; and 4. There are no ‘good reasons’ not to register the child as a national of that State; A State’s refusal to recognize a person as a national can be an explicit declaration or a failure to respond to queries; and To determine whether a child would otherwise be stateless, the State must assess all relevant evidence. A more detailed summary of these Guidelines is available in Chapter V. Although individual OSCE participating States may specify how children acquire that State’s nationality, all States are required to comply with applicable international law. OSCE participating States should consider that it is usually in a child’s best interests to acquire a nationality at birth, and States Parties to the CRC are obligated to consider children’s best interests as a primary consideration. Often, to be most effective, nationality safeguards should apply automatically and with retroactive effect. A law which allows a stateless or undocumented person to be recognized as a citizen is much more effective if it applies retroactively, because this means, for example, that the person’s children born before the parent was recognized as a citizen can also be considered citizens from birth. Automatic application of nationality laws can also prevent potential problems that frequently arise when a registration application is required. For example, some States require that children, particularly if born outside the territory of their parent’s country of nationality, are registered in order to acquire citizenship. If parents are unaware of this requirement or fail to register their children, this can result in the children being left stateless. Thus, the best practice is that children who would otherwise be stateless acquire nationality automatically immediately upon birth, and that later recognition of nationality is retroactive to date of birth for individuals who should have had that nationality from birth. States should assess whether children born on their territory are considered nationals of another State under the operation of the relevant States’ laws; if the child has no other nationality, the State of the child’s birth may have an obligation under the 1961 Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (or other international law) to grant its nationality to the child.24 In States which are jus soli jurisdictions but have exceptions for children 24 12 Good Practices Paper, Action 2: Ensuring that no child is born stateless, UNHCR, 20 March 2017.