mother and child was successful, and the case was successfully returned back to the Ministry
for reconsideration which, in the end, granted subsidiary protection to the mother and child
while the father´s case is still pending. However, the statelessness of the child was not
mentioned or considered by the court or by the Ministry.
4.4 Spain
Five cases were included in the research in Spain. Three cases relate to children of Sahrawi
origin, one of whom was seeking statelessness status with his parents; the other two were
seeking confirmation of their Spanish nationality having been born stateless in Spain. A fourth
case related to a child born in transit in Morocco to a Cameroonian mother who then
travelled on to Spain and claimed asylum. The fifth case was a family of Russian origin
seeking international protection in Spain, including one child who was born in Spain who is at
risk of statelessness due to the inability to confirm whether the child has acquired Russian or
any other nationality.
Some of the key barriers identified in the Spanish cases include delays in the statelessness
determination procedure, leading to issues accessing reception support and the right to work
for parents, as well as making the civil registration process for children born in Spain to
parents seeking statelessness status more complex. Evidence from the research suggests that
practice varies between different civil registry offices in different regions in terms of how the
safeguard in nationality law for a child born on the territory who would otherwise be
stateless is interpreted and applied in practice. In some civil registry offices, parents are
required to have a positive decision on a statelessness status claim before the child may be
registered as Spanish (as evidenced by the case in Mérida in the research); whereas in others
(for example, in the case included in the research in Toledo) the child was duly registered, and
his Spanish nationality confirmed while his mother’s SDP application was still pending.
The other cases illustrate two very current issues and causes of risks of statelessness among
children in migration. Firstly, the risk that may arise when a child is born to a refugee parent
in transit and their birth is not registered. In this case, the mother also lacked proof of identity
and nationality, and determining the child’s nationality was further complicated by the
mother’s fear of gender-based persecution from her own and the child’s father’s family. The
final case illustrated clearly the difficulties faced by applicants for international protection
who lack identity documents and proof of family links in registering a child born in exile with
the authorities of their country of nationality to acquire confirmation and proof of the child’s
nationality.