in 1910 the status of “Dutch subject non-Dutch national” (Nederlands onderdaan nietNederlander) was provided for in citizenship law. Thus, while the 1892 Act had left them without a nationality, the 1910 Act clarified their status as subjects, albeit not Dutch citizens. This state of affairs continued until Indonesia’s independence in 1949. 32. Another example concerned the period 1945–49, when Indonesia became independent and the Moluccas – a group of islands to the northeast of Java – attempted to achieve autonomy from Indonesia. In 1951, as an armed conflict in the Moluccas increased in intensity, the Dutch Government transferred some 4,000 Moluccans, who had served in the Dutch Colonial Army, and their families (in total around 12,500 people) to the Netherlands and demobilized them. Both the Dutch Government and the exiled Moluccans assumed that this would be a temporary arrangement. It was expected that soon the Moluccans would have their own country to return to. Though this expectation is yet to be fulfilled, at the time their belief in an autonomous State was strong and therefore most had no desire to acquire Dutch citizenship. While the Moluccans in the Netherlands had obtained Indonesian citizenship in 1949, they lost their Indonesian citizenship as a result of the 1958 Indonesian Nationality Act, due to residence outside Indonesia for a continuous period of five years without having expressed a wish to remain an citizen of Indonesia. They thus became stateless. By the 1970s about 30,000 stateless persons of Moluccan origin lived in the Netherlands. The Dutch Government recognized the need for improvement and in 1976 the Law pertaining to the position of Moluccans (“Faciliteitenwet Molukkers”) was approved,43 granting Moluccans (nearly) the same rights as Dutch nationals, without actually making them citizens. In their passports it was stated that they were to be treated as Dutch nationals on the basis of the 1976 Act. As this gave rise to practical problems, the Dutch Government decided in 1991 that all stateless Moluccans would be Dutch nationals for the purpose of the Passport Act. Although most have since acquired regular Dutch citizenship, according to Van Oers et. al. up to 1,000 people may still hold the quasi-citizenship bestowed by the Faciliteitenwet. 33. In April 2003, a significantly revised Dutch Nationality Act entered into force. Prior to this revision, children born out of wedlock but acknowledged by a Dutch father automatically acquired citizenship, but because this had apparently repeatedly led to fraudulent acknowledgments, this arrangement was adjusted. After the modification children born out of wedlock could only obtain Dutch nationality after having been cared for by their Dutch father for at least three years. If these children had not acquired their mothers’ citizenship in the meantime, they were stateless for three years. However, the law was again amended in 2009. At present, children automatically receive Dutch citizenship if they are acknowledged by their Dutch father before they have reached the age of seven. After this age, parenthood has to be established through a DNA-test. 34. In 2010 a further amendment to the Dutch Nationality Act included measures to permit so-called “latent Dutch citizens” to acquire Dutch citizenship. This change concerned a group of people who were born of a Dutch mother before 1985, but who did not hold Dutch citizenship, because at the time Dutch citizenship could only be passed on via the father. Even though, as of 1985, children of a Dutch mother and a foreign father could also acquire Dutch citizenship and despite the fact that there was a transitional scheme in place for this group at the time, not everyone made use of it. The new Act thus regulated that those who are born before 1985 to a Dutch mother could apply for Dutch citizenship. Grandchildren, i.e. persons whose parent(s) were born before 1985 to a Dutch mother, could also acquire Dutch citizenship if their parent(s) opted for it or they could acquire it themselves if the relevant parent had died. As the government indicated at time this “does justice to the basic principle that men and women are fully equal in nationality law”.44 43 16 Stb. 1976, 468. Mapping statelessness