obligation on the State to ensure that children are born with a nationality, a more inclusive formulation of the law is preferred, where children born to both female and male nationals abroad automatically acquire nationality of the State of the parent’s nationality. The ability of parents of either gender to confer their nationality to their children on an equal basis in the case that they are born abroad is very important, particularly in humanitarian emergencies and situations of displacement that create family separation as well as a significantly heightened risk of statelessness, where family unity may be threatened, and women may be forced to give birth outside of their home country, and possibly without the father of the child present. In such situations, if women cannot confer nationality to their children the children may wind up stateless. Due to devastation in crisis areas, such as currently in Syria, many refugees sought and seek safety in countries in the region empty handed, with few forms of documentation, and documents that may have expired. This makes it extremely difficult for them to go through the process of obtaining a birth certificate for children that are born in exile. It is known that the lack of documentation can be a vicious cycle. For instance, people without documents cannot obtain documents for their children, they cannot access essential services, they cannot have access to vital protection, or live their lives in a normal way, as the obstacles they face are many. The risk of statelessness is even more acute because so many refugee children are separated from their families, making it even harder to establish the family links and the country to which they belong as nationals, and making it that much more important that their births are registered. Furthermore, conflicts often devastate the facilities, infrastructure and capacity of State bodies that issue nationality and identity documentation. Application Enacting gender equal legislation has an enormous positive impact on children and families.34 As more children enjoy their right to a nationality, they will more easily have access to basic services such as health and education, and are protected from situations of exploitation and violence, such as child marriage, child labour, family separation, trafficking and illegal adoption. This is likely to have longer term economic impacts, as people with an education will eventually have greater job prospects. This positive impact will be further boosted as those with full nationality have unhindered access to the labour market. Allowing women to pass nationality to their children on 17