Republic. The Czech authorities have not recognised the family’s statelessness and communication with the Embassy of Ukraine has proven difficult, so the family remains in limbo, unable to prove either their statelessness or any potential entitlement to Ukrainian nationality. In another family, a child born in the Czech Republic was unable to acquire any nationality, as her mother is a Latvian ‘non-citizen’ which impacted on the child’s entitlement to Latvian nationality.11 3.2.2 Refugee parent/s unable to approach embassy to register child In the Latvian case, as in other cases in Spain and the Czech Republic, the child’s father is a refugee whose claim for asylum is pending, preventing the parent from approaching the embassy to confirm the child’s acquisition of their nationality due to fear of persecution. It is often a requirement for a parent to register their child born abroad with their embassy, within a certain period of time, for the child to acquire that country’s nationality. This practical step is often impossible for the children of refugees who have fled persecution in their country of nationality, so are afraid of approaching the authorities of their State of nationality thus leaving their children in limbo without the possibility of (ever) acquiring proof of nationality. 3.2.3 Parents with insecure status or who lack documentation In several cases, the parents’ insecure status or lack of documentation was a contributing or exacerbating factor in the child’s (risk of) statelessness. In the Czech Republic and Albania, parents’ outstanding asylum claims prolonged children’s statelessness as the law requires parents to have legal residence for a stateless child to acquire nationality.12 In Ukraine, the competent authorities refused to accept the documents of several participating children on grounds that the parents were asylum seekers, which is not in line with the law (and was subsequently challenged through the courts during the research). Parents’ lack of documentation also presented barriers in several cases to registering the births of children born in the research countries or in transit. For example, in the case of a Cameroonian mother whose child was born in transit in Morocco – both she and her daughter lacked any documentary proof of their family links or identity. 3.2.4 Gaps, conflicts, and discrimination in nationality laws In some cases, specific issues relating to the nationality laws of the parent/s countries of nationality were a key cause or contributing factor in the child’s (risk of) statelessness. For 11 See https://index.statelessness.eu/country/latvia for more information on statelessness in Latvia. The safeguard for otherwise stateless children born in Albania was amended in 2020, but practice is still unclear. See https://index.statelessness.eu/country/albania for more information. 12