a) Retroactive application of the new amendments to the Citizenship act is limited to those who have not yet attained the age of 15, and therefore anyone above that age who was born on the territory stateless cannot benefit. b) In addition, the condition of 5 years residence in the country by the parents, prior to the birth of the child, may act to disqualify some children of stateless parents from obtaining citizenship. c) The possibility for parents to “opt out” of Estonian nationality on behalf of their child within the first year of their life may continue to cause situations in which the parents’ views on citizenship engender childhood statelessness. d) The law does not make any provision for access to Estonian nationality for children born in Estonia and whose parents hold the citizenship of another country, if they would otherwise be stateless. e) The law does not include a provision about access to Estonian nationality for children born outside of Estonia whose parents are “persons of undetermined nationality” with residence in Estonia, even if they would otherwise be stateless (as is the case, for instance, in the Ukraine).7 f) For children who benefit from dual nationality, when they become adults, they have to renounce either the citizenship of Estonia or the other country within three years. At present, it is not clear whether provision has been made for an information campaign or other efforts to disseminate information about these steps to the public and what the consequences would be of failing to renounce the foreign nationality within this timeframe. g) As mentioned, Estonia is not a party to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness or the European Convention on Nationality which contain key international safeguards relating to the realisation of children’s right to a nationality. It is crucial that the state recognise the need for elaborating safeguards to prevent statelessness for all otherwise stateless children born in the territory and accession to these instruments forms a key part of an integrated response. Naturalisation for stateless persons 5. 7 Since the year 2000, the number of naturalisations of stateless persons has been low, having fallen significantly since the 1990s. The issue has since been raised regularly by UN and Council of Europe committees and expert bodies, and by numerous other K. Kolesen, Tackling Childhood Statelessness in Ukraine, May 2015, available at: http://www.statelessness.eu/sites/www.statelessness.eu/files/Research_electronic%20version_.pdf