YALE HUMAN RIGHTS & DEVELOPMENT L.J. 2017] The Risk of Statelessness VOL. XIX 87 by Haitian authorities, and this official act relies in part on the documentation of that child’s parents in Haiti.265 Once the parents’ nationalities have been confirmed, a consular officer is charged with registering the foreign birth for purposes of nationality.266 However, problems can arise at many points in this process. In addition, during Haiti’s Universal Periodic Review in 2011, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees submitted testimony regarding the dysfuncion of the civil registry system and the ability of civil authorities to verify the identity of Haitian nationals abroad.267 Haiti’s civil registry suffers from limited financial resources and a lack of clarity in applicable regulatory frameworks.268 The result has been a failure on the part of the Haitian state to register the births of generations of Haitians, and this failure has compounded problems associated with registering births abroad.269 Haitian consular officials, to the extent that they must verify claims to Haitian nationality abroad, inherit the problems of the civil registry in Haiti.270 Moreover, Haitian consular officials face an additional problem of needing to interpret and apply Haiti’s nationality law, with all the accompanying uncertainties outlined above. As evidence of the challenges these officials face, the UNHCR has reported inconsistent responses in a survey of four Haitian consulates in countries with the highest Haitian migrant populations.271 The exact implications of such arbitrary application of the law are yet to be studied, but the unpredictability of the process is evident. The very nature of these ambiguities in the law, coupled with the for Haiti’s Universal Periodic Review], http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4d8869932.pdf [https://perma.cc/JDV6-M7RC]. 265. See 2010 Open Society Report on Dominicans of Haitian Descent, supra note 143, at 7-8; see also TCRD, 25 septiembre 2013, Sentencia TC/0168/13, pp. 80-82 (explaining processes of registration for Haitian births abroad, as dictated by Décret du 27 Février 1974 sur la Nationalité et la Naturalisation [Feb. 27, 1974 Decree on Nationality and Naturalization], art. 2, Le Moniteur No. 20, Mar. 14, 1974 (Haiti). Législation du 14 September 1958 sur les Attributions du Consul [Sept. 14, 1958 Legislation on Attributions of Consular Service], Le Moniteur No. 78-141 (Dec. 29, 1958) (Haiti)). 266. See 2010 Open Society Report on Dominicans of Haitian Descent, supra note 143, at 8; see also TCRD, 25 septiembre 2013, Sentencia TC/0168/13, pp. 95-96 (Dom. Rep.) (explaining the foreign birth registration process in the Dominican Republic). For further discussion of these processes and their problems, see chapter III of Human Rights Watch Report on Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality in the Dominican Republic, supra note 5. 267. See 2011 UNHCR Submission for Haiti’s Universal Periodic Review, supra note 264, at 2-3. 268. Tobin, supra note 264, at 6 & n.32, 11. 269. Id. at 6. 270. Id. at 11. 271. See 2011 UNHCR Submission for Haiti’s Universal Periodic Review, supra note 264, at 3 (noting that a 2008 UNHCR survey showed disagreement among Haitian consular officials in “how far . . . lineage rights could extend to grant nationality”). Difficulties with the implementation of a 2014 Haitian government initiative that attempted to resolve document requests for some “300,000 irregular migrants living in the Dominican Republic” further demonstrated “the ongoing disorganization of the Haitian civil registration system.” Tobin, supra note 264, at 6. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3111529