women’s right to confer nationality on a foreign spouse. However, this proposed reform has yet to be realised over the past six years. 18. The persistence of gender discrimination in the 1978 Bangladesh Citizenship (Temporary Provisions) Rules results in violations of Bangladesh’s obligations under international law and its own Constitution to uphold equality before the law and equality of opportunity. 19. Other UN Treaty Bodies expressed their concerns regarding statelessness in the country. In 2015, the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recommended Bangladesh to increase the birth registration rate as well as access to basic rights for all children, including the Rohingya. 13 In 2017, the Committee on Migrant Workers (CMW) recommended Bangladesh to register all children of migrant workers at birth, issue them personal identity documents and “raise awareness of the importance of birth registration among migrant workers and their families”, grant Bangladeshi citizenship to children born prior to 31 December 2008 to a Bangladeshi mother and a non-citizen father and accede to both Statelessness Conventions.14 Snapshot of Challenges relating to the Right to a Nationality and Statelessness in Bangladesh 20. According to UNHCR, there were more than 900,000 stateless persons, including forcibly displaced stateless people, in Bangladesh at the end of 2021.15 There are no reliable statistics on the stateless population in Bangladesh put forward by the Bangladeshi government. Various communities- as described below- are subject to statelessness and the denial of their right to Bangladeshi nationality. The laws of Bangladesh provide for both jus soli and jus sanguinis citizenship. Under its written law, persons born in the territory will gain citizenship unless their father is a diplomat or an enemy alien. 16 However, in practice, the citizenship of a child is generally only recognised by the state if one or both parents are Bangladeshi citizens, shifting the application of the law towards jus sanguinis.17 Additionally, the law requires that if the parent of the child is a citizen by descent, and the child is born abroad the birth must be registered for citizenship to be obtained.18 21. Stateless persons face wide-ranging human rights violations and hardships, including obstacles to accessing healthcare, social services, formal employment, property rights, inheritance, freedom of movement, and identity documentation. Stateless persons are also at a greater risk of human trafficking, arbitrary detention, and lack of access to justice. 22. The Urdu-speaking community is one of the populations that face major obstacles in enjoying the right to a nationality. Historically, the Urdu-speaking community was stateless with their status as Bangladeshi citizens denied due to perceived connections 13 Committee on the Rights of the Child, ‘Concluding Observations on the Fifth Periodic Report of Bangladesh’, (30 October 2015), CRC/C/BGD/CO/5, paras. 34 and 35. 14 Committee on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, ‘Concluding Observations of the Initial Report of Bangladesh’, (22 May 2017), CMW/C/BDG/CO/1, paras. 39 and 40. 15 UNHCR, ‘Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2021’, (June 2022), Annex, Table 5, UNHCR - Global Trends Report 2021. 16 The Citizenship Act (1951) Section 10. 17 Ibid, Section 4 and Ridwanul Hoque, ‘Report on Citizenship Law: Bangladesh’, (December 2016), available at: https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/44545/EudoCit_2016_14Bangladesh.pdf. 18 The Citizenship Act (1951) Section 5. 4