Statelessness, Development, and Protection of ‘Disadvantaged Groups’
Concerning this mandate, SDGs 5, 10, 16, and 17, in addition to certain related
targets appeared most applicable.
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§
SDG 5: Target 5.1, ‘End all forms of discrimination against all women
and girls everywhere’, is directly relevant to addressing the issue of
gender discrimination in nationality laws. This is relevant because
where nationality laws make women’s nationality status contingent on
their husbands’, or prevent (stateless) men from acquiring their wives’
nationality, can be a major cause of statelessness.5051
§
SDG 10: Target 10.3, ‘Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of
outcome, ... eliminating discriminatory laws, policies, and practices, and
promoting appropriate legislation, policies, and action’. This confronts
discrimination based on ethnicity, race, religion, language, or gender.
Instances of denial, loss, and deprivation of nationality on discriminatory
grounds may induce statelessness. Targets 10.3 and 16.b ensure that
stateless persons enjoy their human rights without discrimination due to
lack of citizenship.
§
SDG 16 seeks to ‘promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable
development, provide access to justice for all and build effective,
accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels’. Its Target 16.9 aims to,
‘by 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration’ toward
leaving no one behind, including the stateless. Accordingly, a lack of
nationality should not constitute a barrier to human rights protection or
equal access to development. Target 16.b implores states to ‘promote and
enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development’,
particularly in terms of education, health, equality, work, and addressing
poverty.
§
SDG 17 requires states to ‘strengthen the means of implementation
and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development’. This
illustrates key action enablers across the whole SDG framework. It focuses
on implementing the SDGs through partnerships, and stakeholder
engagement, including civil society, the private sector, and donor
states and organisations. Its Target 17.18 centres on data, monitoring,
and accountability: “By 2020, enhance capacity-building support to
developing countries, including for least-developed countries and small
island-developing states, to increase significantly the availability of highquality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by income, gender, age,
race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location and other
characteristics relevant in national contexts.’ This provides an opportunity
for the improvement of statistical data on stateless populations —
UNHCR ibid; ISI op cit note 44.
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