time without birth registration and the legal protection that comes with it. The fact that there are still children who cannot obtain birth and citizenship certificates at birth is not just contrary to the need to prevent statelessness, but leads to the violation of a series of other rights of children. 21. The requirement that the parents of the child have official documentation in order to register the birth of their child, leads to discrimination of Roma children. Undocumented persons in Serbia are mainly members of the Roma ethnic minority30 and thus difficulties related to birth registration almost exclusively occur among Roma children. The right to a personal name and timely birth registration is guaranteed to every child, immediately after birth, irrespective of the child’s or his or her parent’s status. However, children of Roma ethnicity are disadvantaged when compared with other children whose parents possess documents and who do not face problems in exercising the right to birth registration. The fact that timely birth registration is made conditional on the possession of documents of the parents constitutes indirect and institutional discrimination against the Roma. This is further indicated by data about birth registration rates: “the births of 99% of children under five years in Serbia have been registered. There are no significant variations in birth registration across different background characteristics apart from ethnicity where Roma have the lowest birth registration rate (94%).”31 The Right of Every Child to Acquire a Nationality 22. The manner in which the acquisition of Serbian citizenship is regulated is, on the face of it, in accordance with international standards, including the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. In addition to rules prescribing that citizenship is through descent (jus sanguinis) of a Serbian parent, there is also provision for ‘otherwise stateless’ children to acquire citizenship by virtue of having been born on the territory (jus soli).32 However, the problem is the lack of clear guidelines regarding the procedure for acquisition of citizenship on the basis of the jus soli principle and the fact that the procedure established in practice introduces new conditions, which are not in line with the Law on Citizenship and the 1961 Convention. 23. According to Article 13 of the Law on Citizenship, Serbian citizenship shall be acquired by a child born or found33 in the Serbian territory if his/her parents are unknown, stateless, of unknown citizenship, or if the child would otherwise be stateless. Citizenship should be acquired at birth, automatically, by operation of the law. The Serbian Constitution also prescribes that a child born in Serbia shall have the right to Serbian citizenship if the conditions have not been met for him/her to acquire the citizenship of another state.34 For a child who acquires the citizenship of the Republic of Serbia by being born on its territory, the fact of his/her citizenship shall be registered in the birth registries based on the document proving that the child’s parents 30 Members of the Roma national minority are most represented among persons without documments and those whose births have never been registered. Protector of Citizens of the Republic of Serbia, Report on the position of „Legally Invisible“ Persons in the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, 2012, p. 11, available at: http://www.ombudsman.rs/attachments/2222_Izvestaj%20o%20polozaju%20%20pravno%20nevidljivih%20u%20RS.pdf. 31 Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia and UNICEF, Serbia Multiple Cluster Survey and Serbia Roma Settlements Indicator Cluster Survey, 2014, Final Reports, Belgrade, December 2014, available at: https://www.unicef.org/serbia/Serbia2014MICS_NationalandRomaSettlements_Eng_2015FINAL.pdf, xxiv. 32 Article 13 of the Law on Citizenship, Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, nos. 135/2004 and 90/2007. 33 The fact of birth of a foundling is registered in the birth registry in the territory where the child was found. The registration is performed on the basis of the decision of the competent guardianship body which contains, inter alia, the data on citizenship of the child. See Article 50 of the Law on Registry Books, Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, No. 20/2009 and 145/2014. 34 See Article 38, paragraph 3 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia, No. 98/2006. 7