The Committee endorsed as good practice the rule of “double jus soli” where a child is automatically attributed nationality if one parent (either mother or father) was also born in the state. It also urged that children born in the territory of a state of foreign parents should have “the right to acquire nationality after a period of residence that does not require the child to wait until majority before nationality can be confirmed.”209  In a case concerning Sudan’s failure to recognise the citizenship of the child of a Sudanese mother and a father who, it was asserted, would have acquired South Sudanese citizenship on the secession of South Sudan (had he not predeceased), the African Committee of Experts stated that it is an international obligation for states to confer nationality on “children who have the required social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments in the state concerned.”210 The Committee was drawing on the definition of nationality in the ICJ’s judgment in the Nottebohm case211 to derive a positive obligation to grant nationality if the definition is fulfilled. The Committee noted that it is the state of the child’s birth that has the primary obligation to grant nationality if a child is stateless.212 The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has adopted the same view.  In a decision against Côte d’Ivoire adopted in 2015, the African Commission drew on the provisions of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child in order to recommend that the Ivorian government should reform its nationality law. It affirmed that: [T]he obligation of the State on whose territory a person claims to have been born to grant him nationality, unless the said State [can] prove that the person in question has already acquired or is eligible to another nationality. The totality of all the historical and legal prerequisites established above [in discussion of the history of labour migration in Côte d’Ivoire] is of key relevance to the interpretation and implementation of the right guaranteed by Article 5 of the Charter.213 In line with the recommendation of the African Committee of Experts in relation to the rule of “double jus soli”, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights relating to the Specific Aspects of the Right to a nationality and the Eradication of Statelessness in Africa adopted by the African Union in 2024 establishes the requirement that states should automatically attribute nationality not only to children born or found in their territory who are otherwise stateless, but also to children born in the territory who have one parent who was also born there. The Protocol also provides for states to permit acquisition of nationality by people born in the territory and habitually resident there during a period of his or her childhood. Children not born in the territory The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness requires that states parties attribute nationality to children born outside the country to one of their nationals at minimum where those children would otherwise be stateless (Articles 1(4) and 4).214 An analysis of the “best interests of the child” may in addition extend the obligation to grant nationality to include stateless children resident but not born in the territory and with no family connection to an existing citizen.  An important 2021 decision from a provincial appeal court in Spain (and not appealed by the Spanish government) recognised the Spanish nationality “of origin” of a child born in Morocco to a Cameroonian mother, who had entered Spain irregularly but eventually settled there. The birth had not been registered in Morocco, and there was no possibility of registering the birth with the consular authorities of Cameroon.215  In 2019, the Committee on the Rights of the Child found that Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, on the right of every child to acquire a nationality, implied that Switzerland must take the necessary positive actions to implement this right. The case concerned a child born in Lebanon to Palestinian parents that Switzerland wished to deport with the mother to Bulgaria, where mother and child had previously been given subsidiary protected status.216 209 Ibid., para. 92. 210 ACJPS & PLACE (Benjamin) v. Sudan, supra n 42, para. 33. 211 Nottebohm Case, supra n 8, p.23. 212 ACJPS & PLACE (Benjamin) v. Sudan, supra n 42, para. 60. 213 Open Society Justice Initiative v. Côte d’Ivoire, supra n 166, para. 115. The judgment has “cannot” when it clearly means (and says in French) “can”. 214 The same rule is adopted by the Protocol to the African Charter on the Right to a Nationality, art. 5. 215 Case summary at: http://www.migrarconderechos.es/jurisprudenceMastertable/jurisprudencia/SAPr_Guipuzcoa_11_05_2022;jsessionid=DA1E52442B42F7B82C94B9E00BE1C338; see also José Alberto Navarro, Laura Lozano, and Cristina Manzanedo, “Landmark Judgment from Spain: Court Grants Spanish Nationality to a Stateless Child Born En Route (a case of ‘invisible children’) (blog post), European Network on Statelessness, 7 July 2022, https://www.statelessness.eu/updates/blog/landmark-judgment-spain-court-grants-spanish-nationality-stateless-child-born-en-route. A.M. (on behalf of M.K.A.H.) v. Switzerland, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, CRC/C/88/D/95/2019, 6 October 2021. https://juris.ohchr.org/ casedetails/2957/en-US. 216 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 61