nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality’. These
norms have acquired the status of customary international law.
Article 24 (3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (ICCPR) states that ‘every child has the right to acquire a
nationality’. This right is reaffirmed in Article 7 of the Convention
on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Article 5 of the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
mandates that State Parties ‘eliminate racial discrimination in all
its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without
distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin…to
nationality’. Article 9 of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) requires that
States Parties ‘shall grant women equal rights with men to
acquire, change or retain their nationality’ and ‘shall grant
women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of
their children’. Article 18 of the Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) inter alia notes that persons
with disability ‘have the right to acquire and change a nationality
and are not deprived of their nationality arbitrarily or on the
basis of disability’. Finally, Article 29 of the International
Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers
and Members of their Families (CMW) requires that ‘each child
of a migrant worker shall have the right to a … nationality’.
But despite international efforts the problem of statelessness has
not gone away. Indeed, it has made a comeback on the
international agenda. The publication, The World’s Stateless:
Deprivation of Nationality (2020), brought out by the Institute on
Statelessness and Inclusion, estimates that at least 15 million
people live today without a nationality. Among these are stateless
groups in South Asia that include the Rohingya in Myanmar and
Bihari refugees in Bangladesh.
In the instance of India it notes the threat of ‘mass
disenfranchisement’ as a result of the National Register for
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