possession d’état de national, called the centre of life argument; the revocation of residency rights or citizenship of those who left the country for a time, due to studies abroad or other reasons, using the argument that they moved their centre of life elsewhere. This also potentially leads to situations of statelessness. Looking specifically at the laws and policies of many MENA countries, participants agreed that they provide some important guarantees against statelessness while also exhibiting a number of shortcomings. While legislative safeguards do exist in national legislation in the region, weaknesses lie in their level of implementation. More concretely, as most countries have ratified international treaties, including the ICCPR, which renders a state legally bound to allow a child who would otherwise be stateless to acquire nationality by virtue of birth on the state’s territory, the legal provision is rarely applied by administrative authorities. This is the outcome where the law provide for the conferral of nationality to a child whose mother is a national if the child’s father is unknown or is stateless – a policy that will avoid statelessness in some cases but not in others- as the situation is dependent on the situation of the father rather than the actual exposure of the child to statelessness.. Thus, in many countries there are areas in which the state can be applauded for its efforts to avoid statelessness, while there is also still room for improvement in terms of further legislative reform or improved implementation of the relevant safeguards. Positive trends in the region Having established that many MENA states do have legislative safeguards for the avoidance of statelessness in place but that implementation may be problematic, participants noted that one positive development within the region is the opening up of new avenues to monitor and ensure the correct application of these nationality laws through recourse to the courts. The 2004 amendment to Egypt’s nationality law whereby a woman was given equal right to give her nationality to her children, should her husband or the father of her child be stateless, for example, not only brought about increased gender equality, but also established the jurisdiction of the courts in cases relating to nationality attribution. While in Lebanon (1950-60) numerous wealthy Palestinians were given the Lebanese nationality either by decree or by ministerial decisions, resolving a stateless situation for some individuals, but not systemically. Participants discussed possibilities for developing jurisprudence on the prevention and reduction of statelessness through strategic litigation – an activity which is already being pursued through legal aid programmes in some countries in the region but which could benefit from the further careful selection of key cases. In this context, participants also recalled how courts played a key role in addressing statelessness elsewhere, such as for the Urdu- speakers/ Biharis in Bangladesh. Thereafter, a number of further positive trends evident in the region in terms of the prevention and reduction of statelessness were discussed. Most prominent of these is the reform of nationality legislation in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria and Iraq to introduce greater gender equality in the enjoyment of nationality rights – a measure which has served to both lower the risk of future statelessness and resolve some existing cases of statelessness 15