In 2019, Iran partially reformed its law to allow Iranian women to submit an application to confer their nationality to their children wherever they are born. The Government retains discretion as to whether to grant or deny conferral of nationality requested in the application. While the reform does not put mothers and fathers on a fully equal footing with respect to their ability to confer nationality to their children, it represents a significant incremental improvement. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the Government of Iran announced that 10,000 citizenship applications concerning newly eligible children have so far been approved and that it had begun issuing identity documents to these children. It is estimated that nearly 75,000 children are eligible for Iranian citizenship under the new citizenship law. At the High-Level Segment on Statelessness on 7 October 2019, two States, Liberia and Eswatini, pledged to resolve issues of gender discrimination in their respective nationality laws before the end of the #IBelong Campaign in 2024.13 UNHCR is supporting both Governments to make the necessary amendments to deliver on these pledges by 2024. On 23 September 2020, UN Women, UNDP, UNHCR, the Commonwealth and the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights convened a High Level Side Event on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly to call for urgent reform of nationality laws that discriminate on the basis of gender. Panelists at the event underscored that gender-equal nationality laws are essential to achieving equality for women, sustainable development, and security. Unequal ability of women to confer nationality on their children The table below uses a color scheme to divide the laws of the 25 States into three categories. The laws of the first group of countries (red) have nationality laws which do not allow mothers to confer their nationality on their children with no, or very limited, exceptions – these laws create the greatest risk of statelessness. The laws of the second group of countries (orange) allow women to confer nationality in some circumstances (for example, some make exceptions for mothers to confer nationality if the father is unknown or stateless and some establish a discretionary procedure for conferral of nationality upon application). The laws of the third group of countries (yellow) also limit the conferral of nationality by women but additional guarantees ensure that statelessness will rarely arise. 13 6 An additional four States made pledges concerning gender discrimination that are outside the scope of this survey. U N H C R > B A C K G R O U N D N O T E O N G E N D E R E Q U A L I T Y, N AT I O N A L I T Y L A W S A N D S TAT E L E S S N E S S 2 0 2 1