6. Other relevant recommendations include: - Promoting the rights of indigenous populations of the country, particularly their access to citizenship (Cape Verde). 5 Cameroon supported this recommendation. As explained in this submission, Cameroon is obligated ensure the right to acquire nationality of indigenous people and vulnerable groups. This includes ensuring their access to immediate birth registration, without which a child cannot be registered as a national. - Relatedly, the Republic of Moldova and Sierra Leone recommended that Cameroon applies a strategy for universal birth registration. Cameroon supported both recommendations.6 Legal and practical barriers to universal birth registration still exist, undermining the child’s right to a nationality. - Thailand recommended that Cameroon should ‘Promote equal treatment before the law, including through social protection, the right to birth registration, and the right to an equal use of natural resources’.7Cameroon supported this decision. However, as explored in this Submission, the risks of statelessness as a result of discrimination is still prevalent in Cameroon. Relevant international, regional and national law 7. Cameroon is not party to the 1954 UN Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Stateless. A recommendation to accede the latter Convention was noted during the 2nd UPR cycle. Cameroon has however signed the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and has acceded to its 1967 Protocol. 8. Cameroon is also a party to core human rights treaties that include provisions related to statelessness and/or nationality, such as the International Covenant on Civil on Political Rights (ICCPR, 1966), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD, 1965), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1979), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1997) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, 2006). 9. As a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with no reservations in place, Cameroon is obliged to ensure every child’s right to acquire a nationality in accordance with Article 7 of the Convention and the Convention’s Guiding Principles of non-discrimination, best interests of the child, the child’s right to participate and the right to life, survival and development of the child. The CRC also prohibits denial of the child’s right to right to a nationality as a result of discrimination against the child or his or her parents or guardians, on all prohibited grounds including gender, race and disability. 10. Regionally, several African Union (AU) instruments adopted and ratified by Cameroon protect the right to nationality of vulnerable groups such as children, women, refugees, IDPs, migrants and indigenous peoples, or prevent them from becoming stateless. 8 Of these, Article 6 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child specifically recognises the right of every child to a nationality. 5 131.168. This recommendations was supported by Cameroon. 131.90 (Republic of Moldova), 131.91 (Sierra Leone) 7 131.89. 8 They include the 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, the 1981 African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, the 1990 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (Article 6 recognises every child’s right to a nationality), the 2003 Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, the 2009 AU Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, and the 1998 Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Establishment of an African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights 6 2