both Jamaica45 and Kenya.46 The Kenyan decision was in turn drawn on by Jamaican civil society for submissions to parliament on proposed new legislation.47 The decisions were also referenced in litigation in Uganda, challenging the exclusionary nature of the existing digital ID system.48  The Colombian Constitutional Court cited jurisprudence on interpretation of the law by the Supreme Court in Chile in its judgment on children of Venezuelan parents born in Colombia.49  In 1994, the Zimbabwe Supreme Court used the Unity Dow case from Botswana (u section 3.2), as well as the jurisprudence of the Human Rights Committee on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to hold that the freedom of movement guaranteed by the Constitution of Zimbabwe entitled a female citizen of Zimbabwe married to a foreign citizen to reside permanently with her husband in Zimbabwe.50 3.4. Impacts on the interpretation of international law Litigation in different jurisdictions in recent years has created an interlocking web of normative statements in which courts have built on each other’s advances, establishing the commonalities among rights violations in different factual situations, and the remedies required.51 Perhaps the most strongly established limits to state discretion are in the area of due process and arbitrary denial of nationality and/or identity documents; that is, the protection of those refused recognition of nationality to which they are entitled in law but are prevented from accessing because of insurmountable administrative obstacles. The judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of the Girls Yean and Bosico against the Dominican Republic was the first to affirm the right to nationality so clearly at international level, and the constraints on state discretion in this regard (u focus box B).52 The judgment has been widely cited in national and other regional fora. The interpretation of the definition of “stateless person” established by the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons has also evolved to include consideration of the view of UNHCR that statelessness is a “mixed question of fact and law”, moving away from an excessively legalistic analysis restricted to only the nationality law. In particular, it has been held that a theoretical right to another nationality does not relieve a state of its obligations to children born in its territory. In 2021, the obligation of states to grant nationality to otherwise stateless children born in their territory was finally affirmed by an international treaty body, in the views of the UN Human Rights Committee in the case of DZ v. The Netherlands.53 (u focus box C) Several cases have addressed discrimination on racial and ethnic grounds in grant or recognition of nationality, establishing important limits to the language recognising state discretion in the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination. The Yean and Bosico judgment affirmed the obligation of states to avoid racial discrimination and ensure equal and effective protection of the law. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has added an emphasis on the avoidance of discrimination based on characteristics that can be attributed to the colonial era, including the drawing of borders and forced movement of labour. The General Comment of the African Committee of Experts on Article 6 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child also drew on its own decision in the Kenyan Nubian Children’s case54 as a foundation to expand the interpretation of the right to a nationality to a broader category of children born in the territory than only foundlings (those found as children in the territory of unknown parents) and those who are otherwise stateless.55 Robinson v. Attorney General of Jamaica, Case Number: 2018HCV01788, Supreme Court of Jamaica, Judgment of 12 April 2019 [2019] JMFC Full 04, para. 84, https://supremecourt.gov.jm/content/robinson-julian-v-attorney-general-jamaica. 45 Nubian Rights Forum & 2 others v. Attorney General and 6 others; Child Welfare Society and 9 others (Interested Parties), Petitions 56, 58 & 59 of 2019 (Consolidated), High Court of Kenya at Nairobi, Judgment of 30 January 2020 [2020] eKLR, http://kenyalaw.org/caselaw/cases/view/189189/. 46 Jamaicans for Justice and 11 others, Submission to the Joint Select Committee of Parliament Reviewing the National Identification and Registration Act (2020), February 2021, https://www.accessnow.org/cms/assets/uploads/2021/03/Jamaica-Digital-ID-NIDS-Coalition-Submission-Feb-2021.pdf. 47 Nita Bhalla, “Uganda Sued over Digital ID System that Excludes Millions”, Reuters, 16 May 2022, https://www.reuters.com/article/uganda-tech-biometrics-idUKL3N2X32RG. 48 49 Sentencia T-006/20, supra n 29, pp.22-23, 58. 50 Rattigan v. Chief Immigration Officer, Zimbabwe, Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, 1995 (2) SA 182 (Zimb.). 51 Bingham & Gamboa, “Litigating against Statelessness”, supra n 15. Case of the Girls Yean and Bosico Girls Yean and Bosico v. Dominican Republic, Series C No. 130, Judgment of 8 September 2005, https://www.refworld.org/ jurisprudence/caselaw/iacrthr/2005/en/20987. The Yean and Bosico case built on the Court’s earlier Advisory Opinion OC-4/84 on Amendments to the Naturalisation Provisions of the Constitution of Costa Rica. 52 DZ v. The Netherlands, CCPR/C/130/D/2918/2016, 20 January 2021, https://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=6QkG1d%2FPPRiCAqhKb7yhstmouIju%2F14z6o8I4G3YTJPkxgZbjfVoFnUxDYNf5e2B5e%2BzpsOxE43guYFPKxUJGRB6fV0qixA4nVIZpg%2Btup1LygYiRxh7J256K6D9A3U7xG6bSBDv9g4CwKwj6QZzVA%3D%3D. 53 54 Supra n 35. African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, General Comment No. 2: Right to a Name, Birth Registration and a Nationality (Art. 6), 2014, para. 100 (hereafter “ACERWC General Comment on Article 6”), https://www.acerwc.africa/general-comments/. 55 22 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