3.2 The registration of stateless persons 35. In theory, all inhabitants of the Netherlands are registered in the “municipal basic administration” (GBA).45 Aliens who lawfully reside in the Netherlands on the basis of Article 8 of the Aliens Act 2000 and who are likely to remain in the Netherlands for at least six months are registered in the GBA as well. Registration can take place at the initiative of the person to be registered, or by order of the municipal authorities, if and when the latter obtain knowledge about the arrival or presence (or absence or departure) of persons in their municipalities. Asylum-seekers living in a reception centre are registered after having stayed there for at least six months. Children born to asylum-seekers living in a reception centre are registered immediately upon birth.46 Decentralized registration data from all Dutch municipalities are collected and aggregated at the national level by the Central Bureau for Statistics. 36. According to Article 43 of the Act GBA, the nationality status of all legal residents is included in the registration. The article specifies that such data is to be based on documents issued by a person or institution that is competent to determine citizenship in the jurisdiction concerned, or that can issue a document testifying to the person’s citizenship. The GBA operational guideline states that neither a declaration under oath by the person concerned, nor an IND document mentioning an individual’s nationality are sufficient evidence.47 Whenever citizenship cannot be readily determined, two options remain: an individual can in theory either be registered as being of unknown nationality, or as stateless. 37. With regard to statelessness, it is not specified in the guideline precisely how this determination is to be conducted, nor does the word “stateless” appear in the Act GBA. The guideline also remarks that statelessness “rarely ever occurs”.48 When it does, however, only those stateless persons able to accurately document their statelessness are registered in this way. It is unclear which law or regulation stipulates that the burden of proof borne by potentially stateless persons should be this high, but it is “common practice” 44  erard-René de Groot and Maarten Vink, “Netherlands: Revision of the Nationality Act”, 12 July G 2010, available at: http://eudo-citizenship.eu/citizenship-news/348-revision-of-the-netherlandsnationality-act-. The mother still had to possess Dutch citizenship at the moment of the birth of the child involved. For children born within wedlock, this raised a difficulty as until 1 March 1964 Dutch women in principle lost their Dutch citizenship by marriage to a foreigner. If the Dutch mother married before that date, she only kept her Dutch citizenship if she did not acquire the citizenship of her husband or could not acquire this nationality easily. Access to Dutch citizenship to the (grand)children of women married to a foreigner before 1 March 1964 therefore depended on how discriminatory the citizenship rules were in the country of the husband. 45 Act on the Municipal Basic Administration (Wet Gemeentelijke Basisadministratie (9 June 1994)). Staatsblad 1994, 494. Article 34 Act GBA states that the nationality of a person is recorded by the municipality where the person is registered. 46 Besluit Gemeentelijke Basisadministratie (8 September 1994), Article 55. 47  gentschap Basisadministratie Persoonsgegevens en Reisdocumenten, “Handleiding A uitvoeringsprocedures”, (2010), 49. See also P.H. Oostendorp, “Staatloosheid, onbekende nationaliteit en de GBA”, in Trends in het nationaliteitsrecht, ed. H.U. Jessurun d’Oliveira (‘s-Gravenhage: Sdu, 1998), 128. 48  gentschap Basisadministratie Persoonsgegevens en Reisdocumenten, “Handleiding A uitvoeringsprocedures”, 75. in the Netherlands 17