78 SECTION I.C.2 While there is no explicit mention of a ‘right to a name’ and the right to be ‘registered immediately after birth’ in the Constitution,122 life and personal liberty under Article 21 are inalienable rights that are inseparable from human dignity. Dignity needs to be seen as a status concept, that is related to ‘the formal legal standing or perhaps, more informally, the moral presence’ that a person has in a society and in their interactions with others.123 In Children of Nubian Descent, the Committee held that there is a strong and direct link between birth registration and nationality, and that every child must have a nationality at birth.124 In this case, the practice of Kenya of not allowing birth certificates to be a proof of citizenship and of allowing children in Kenya to acquire Kenyan nationality only after 18 years of age was held to be a violation of Article 6 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (‘ACRWC’) that stipulates the right to a name and the right to be immediately registered at birth. While it may be argued that the lack of birth registration on its own does not usually place a person at the risk of statelessness, possession of a birth certificate actually helps in establishing an entitlement to nationality.125 Birth registrations of children born in India are mandated and governed by the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969. This Act gives power to every state to frame its own rules in order to implement its provisions, which makes the procedures, requisites and other technicalities non-uniform and inconsistent.126 These procedural inconsistencies create the potential for leaving out registrations. Furthermore, the Act does not provide guidance about the nationality and marital status of a child’s parent, and their effect, 122 As under several international instruments such as the ACHR (Article 18) and the CRC (Article 7), ICCPR (Article 24), Migrants Workers Convention (Article 29), ACRWC (Article 6), among others. 123 Jeremy Waldron, ‘How Law Protects Dignity’ (2012) 71(1) The Cambridge Law Journal 200. 124  Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) and Open Society Justice Initiative (on behalf of Children of Nubian Descent in Kenya) (n 113). 125 UNHCR ‘Good Practices Paper: Action 7 – Ensuring birth registration for the prevention of statelessness’ (2017) <https://www.refworld.org/docid/5a0ac8f94.htm> accessed 4 April 2020. 126 Registration of Births and Deaths Act 1969, s 30. SECURING CITIZENSHIP