Human and Peoples’ Rights (focusing on discrimination and the right to legal status)74 and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (focusing on birth registration, statelessness and the right to a nationality).75 In North Macedonia, the European Roma Rights Centre brought a successful case to the committee responsible for oversight of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) on behalf of six pregnant Roma women evicted from their homes in which lack of identity documents had exacerbated their vulnerability,76 while also bringing a separate case related to similar facts before the European Court of Human Rights.77 C - Case example: DZ v. The Netherlands Denny Zhao was born stateless in the Netherlands, to a mother of Chinese origin, who herself was without recognition of Chinese nationality. The Public Interest Law Project, part of the Dutch section of the International Commission of Jurists, litigated his case before the national courts, both on his behalf and seeking to help many other stateless people born in the Netherlands but unable to access legal protections against statelessness because their parents lacked a regular migration status. The relevant apex court in the Netherlands (the Council of State) refused to order that Denny Zhao should be granted Dutch nationality. The Council of State noted that the lack of a status determination procedure meant that individuals, among them many children, entitled to protection under international treaties to which the Netherlands is a party— including the statelessness conventions—did not receive that protection. However, the court found that “it goes beyond the law-making task of the judiciary to fill in this gap.” Although the Council of Europe has adopted a Convention on nationality, the European Court of Human Rights has no jurisdiction over this treaty. A case relating to nationality and identification must generally be framed as falling within Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereafter, “the European Convention on Human Rights”), on the right to family life. A decision of the European Court of Human Rights would have stronger direct legal effect in the Netherlands, but it is very hard to get cases heard, there is a tight time limit to lodge a case, and its jurisprudence is weak on nationality. For this reason, the decision was made by the Public Interest Law Project, in collaboration with the Open Society Justice Initiative, to take the case to the UN Human Rights Committee rather than the European Court of Human Rights. They were supported by an “(inter)national team of lawyers, legal scholars, experts, activists and children’s rights, human rights and statelessness NGOs”. They also engaged with Dutch parliamentarians who asked the government for a response when the case was launched. Following the lodging of the case, the Dutch Advisory Committee on Migration Affairs issued a report urging the government to create a procedure to resolve the status of stateless persons. The Human Rights Committee found that the Netherlands had violated Denny Zhao’s right to acquire a nationality under Article 24 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Committee quoted the findings of the Council of State in its views.78 Following the judgment, Zhao was paid compensation of €3,000 for the violation of his rights and reimbursement of costs incurred as a result of bringing the complaint before the Committee. Just over a year later, the Netherlands finally enacted a law to establish a statelessness determination procedure, which addressed many—though not all—of the gaps in protection of the right to acquire a nationality.79 74 Kenyan Nubian Children’s Case, supra n 35. 75 Ibid. “North Macedonia Ordered to Pay Compensation for Evicting Pregnant Roma” (Press Release), ERRC, 23 March 2020, http://www.errc.org/press-releases/ north-macedonia-ordered-to-pay-compensation-for-evicting-pregnant-roma. 76 Bekir and others v. North Macedonia (pending before the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), Case summary, ERRC, 8 November 2016, http://www.errc.org/cikk.php?cikk=4531. 77 78 DZ v. The Netherlands, supra n 53. See also case summary at the website of the Open Society Justice Initiative: https://www.justiceinitiative.org/litigation/ zhao-v-netherlands. Laura Bingham and Jelle Klaas, “A Victory for Human Rights in Zhao v. the Netherlands (the ‘Denny case’): Nationality from Birth, Without Exceptions” (blog post), European Network on Statelessness, 14 January 2021, https://www.statelessness.eu/updates/blog/victory-human-rights-zhao-v-netherlands-dennycase-nationality-birth-without-exceptions; Caia Vlieks and Marlotte van Dael, “‘The Endless Waiting Has Destroyed Me’—Will the Statelessness Bills Discussed in the Dutch Parliament This Week Bring a Solution for Stateless People in the Netherlands?” (blog post), European Network on Statelessness, 9 May 2022, https://www.statelessness.eu/updates/blog/endless-waiting-has-destroyed-me-will-statelessness-bills-discussed-dutch-parliament. 79 30 U N H C R | L I T I G AT I N G T H E R I G H T T O A N AT I O N A L I T Y: A G U I D E F O R P R AC T I T I O N E R S