Worster 207 Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers (CRMW),23 and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).24 While these conventions all protect the right to nationality for everyone, some of these treaties have additional provisions protecting the rights of children to a nationality,25 the most important of these probably being the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).26 The CRC is even more significant for the purposes of this article because it has virtually universal adherence and almost no reservations to the child’s right to nationality.27 Thus, for purposes of child statelessness, essentially every state in the world must protect the child’s right to nationality. That being said, what remains difficult about the right to nationality is identifying the state that must ensure this right, perhaps including granting nationality.28 All of the above treaties simply say that the person and/or child has a right to ‘a’ nationality.29 Upon encountering a stateless child born in its territory, a state might say that the child rightly deserves the nationality of his or her parents, who came from another state, and then the problem arises of which state must ensure the child’s nationality. Some authorities have concluded that the obligation to ensure ‘a’ nationality does not oblige a state to grant its nationality to a child born in the state. Gerard-René de Groot and Jaap Doek have argued that the provisions in the ICCPR regarding the child’s right to a nationality do not require the birth state to extend its nationality to stateless children.30 This view is also reflected in the views of the Human Rights Committee31 which has concluded that states need only ensure nationality ‘in cooperation with other States’.32 However, these views may not be entirely accurate. We can begin to find some way to identify the responsible state following from the general principles of how these treaties are applied. Human rights treaties, 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 See UN Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Secretary-General. Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality’ (December 19 2013) UN Doc A/HRC/25/28; Migrant Workers Convention art 29. See CRPD, art 18(1)–(1). See ICCPR, art 24(3); CRPD art 18(2); CRMW, art 29; International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance art 25(4); UNGA Res 50/152, ‘Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ (February 9 1996) UN Doc A/ RES/50/152; UN Human Rights Council Res 26/14, ‘Human rights and arbitrary deprivation of nationality’ (July 11 2014) UN Doc A/HRC/RES/26/14; UN Human Rights Council Res 20/5, ‘Human rights and arbitrary deprivation of nationality’ (July 16 2012) UN Doc A/HRC/RES/20/5; UN Human Rights Council Res 13/2, ‘Human rights and arbitrary deprivation of nationality’ (14 April 2010) UN Doc A/HRC/RES/13/2; UN Human Rights Council Res 10/13, ‘Human rights and arbitrary deprivation of nationality’ (Mar 26 2009) UN Doc A/HRC/RES/10/13; UN Human Rights Council Res 7/10, ‘Human rights and arbitrary deprivation of nationality’ (Mar 26 2009) UN Doc A/HRC/RES/7/10; UN Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Secretary-General. Human Rights and Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality’ (December 19 2013) UN Doc A/HRC/25/28. See Committee on the Rights of the Child and UN Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, ‘DRAFT: Joint General Comment No. 3 (2017) of the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families and No. 22 (2017) of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on the general principles regarding the human rights of children in the context of international migration’ (April 24 2017) UN Doc. INT/CRC/ INF/81/E paras 61–62 <http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CRC/Shared%20Documents/1_Global/INT_CRC_INF_8181_E. docx> accessed 7 May 2019; Sustainable Development Goals – Target 16.9: ‘By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration’ <https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg16> accessed 7 May 2019. See CRC (Nov 20 1989) 1577 UNTS 3 <https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV11&chapter=4&clang=_en> accessed 7 May 2019, at Kuwait: Declarations upon ratification; Monaco: Declaration; UAE: Reservations. See Carol Batchelor, ‘Statelessness And The Problem Of Resolving Nationality Status’ (1998) 10 International Journal of Refugee Law 156, 168–9, (‘While human rights law states clearly in several international instruments that everyone has the right to a nationality, little direction is given in these instruments as to which nationality.’ (emphasis in the original). See UDHR, art 15(1). See Gerard-René de Groot, ‘Children, their right to a nationality and child statelessness’ in Alice Edwards & Laura van Waas (eds), Nationality and Statelessness under International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2014) 146–7; Jaap Doek, ‘The CRC and the Right to Acquire and to Preserve a Nationality’ (2006) 25 Refugee Survey Quarterly 26. See UN Commission on Human Rights, ‘CCPR General Comment No. 17: Article 24 (Rights of the Child)’ (7 April 1989) para 8, (“While the purpose of this provision is to prevent a child from being afforded less protection by society and the State because he is stateless, it does not necessarily make it an obligation for States to give their nationality to every child born in their territory.”). See ICCPR, art 24; Case of Expelled Dominicans & Haitians v Dominican Republic, Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) Series C No 282 (28 August 2014) para 258; UN Commission on Human Rights, ‘CCPR General Comment No. 17: Article 24 (Rights of the Child)’ (7 April 1989) para 8; also see Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) and Open Society Justice Initiative (on behalf of Children of Nubian Descent in Kenya) v. the Government of Kenya (22 March 2011) Decision No 002/ Com/002/2009, African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, para 42, (“a purposive reading and interpretation of the relevant provision strongly suggests that, as much as possible, children should have a nationality beginning from birth.”); African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, ‘General Comment No. 2 on Article 6 of the ACRWC: “The Right to a Name, Registration at Birth, and to Acquire a Nationality”’ (16 April 2014) AU Doc ACERWC/GC/02; UN Human Rights Committee, ‘Concluding Observations: Colombia’ (21 September 1997) UN Doc A/52/40 para 306.