serious question arises as to the compatibility of that situation with the child’s best interests, respect for which must guide any decision in their regard.”24 21. The wording of the third condition moreover resembles the ‘cooperation’ requirement of the Child Pardon Act [Kinderpardonregeling] of 2013, which grants residency to children who have been residing in the Netherlands for at least five years after applying for asylum.25 This requirement has been the major impediment for granting residency permits under the Child Pardon Act and since 2013, 95% of all requests have been denied, mainly due to the cooperation requirement.26 22. Furthermore, as alluded to above, both the 1961 Convention and the ECN allow for an exhaustive number of specific conditions that may be attached to granting nationality to otherwise stateless children born in the territory of States Parties. The 1961 Convention only allows (one or more of) the following four conditions to be attached to an application for nationality of such a child: 1) a fixed period for lodging an application immediately following the age of majority; 2) habitual residence in the Contracting State for a fixed period, not exceeding five years immediately preceding an application nor ten years in all; 3) restrictions on criminal history; 4) the person has always been stateless.27 The ECN only allows the application to be made subject to the lawful and habitual residence on the territory for a period not exceeding five years immediately preceding the lodging of the application.28 The third requirement of ‘stable residence’ as defined in the proposed amendment is not one of these conditions, and is therefore contrary to the 1961 Convention and ECN. The identification and integration of stateless persons 23. The Netherlands presently does not have a dedicated mechanism to identify statelessness. The identification of stateless persons is however of utmost importance in guaranteeing the rights of stateless persons living in the country. In its Handbook on Statelessness, UNHCR observes that “although the 1954 Convention does not explicitly address statelessness determination procedures, there is an implicit responsibility for States to identify stateless persons in order to accord them 24 European Court of Human Rights, Mennesson v. France, Application No. 65192/11, 26 June 2014, para 99. The Child Pardon Act can be found at 26 Defence for Children – The Netherlands, Annual Report on Child Rights, 2016, pages 26 and 27. Available at, https://www.defenceforchildren.nl/images/68/4572.pdf 27 1961 Convention, Article 1(2). That this list is exhaustive is also clear from UNHCR, Guidelines on Statelessness No. 4: Ensuring Every Child's Right to Acquire a Nationality through Articles 1-4 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (21 December 2012) HCR/GS/12/04, para36. See furthermore ENS, Ending Childhood Statelessness: A Comparative Study of Safeguards to Ensure the Right to a Nationality for Children Born in Europe, ENS Working Paper 01/16, which complements the earlier report on childhood statelessness by ENS: ENS, No Child Should Be Stateless (ENS 2015), available online at http://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www.statelessness.eu/files/ENS_NoChildStateless_final.pdf. 28 European Convention on Nationality, Article 6 (2) (b). Note the difference between the 1961 Convention, which allows States to only require habitual residence, and the ECN, which allows States to require lawful and habitual residence. States that are party to both the 1961 Convention and the ECN, like the Netherlands, should comply with both treaties and can hence not require lawful and habitual residence, but only habitual residence. See on this matter also Katja Swider & Caia Vlieks, ‘Voorgestelde nieuwe optie voor Nederlanderschap. Discriminatie van staatloze kinderen zonder wettig verblijf’ [Proposed new option for acquisition of Dutch nationality. Discrimination of stateless children without legal residence] (2016) 4 Asiel & Migrantenrecht [Asylum & Migration Law] 170; UNHCR, Mapping Statelessness in the Netherlands (The Hague: UNHCR 2011) para 117. 25