Good Practices Paper Action 3 Removing Gender Discrimination from Nationality Laws UNHCR is publishing a series of Good Practices Papers to help States, with the support of other stakeholders, achieve the goals of its Campaign to End Statelessness within 10 Years. These goals are to: Resolve the major situations of statelessness that exist today Prevent the emergence of new cases of statelessness Improve the identification and protection of stateless populations Each Good Practices Paper corresponds to one of the 10 Actions proposed in UNHCR’s Global Action Plan to End Statelessness: 2014 - 2024 and highlights examples of how States, UNHCR and other stakeholders have addressed statelessness in a number of countries. Solutions to the problem of statelessness have to be tailored to suit the particular circumstances prevalent in a country. As such, these examples are not intended to serve as a blueprint for strategies to counter statelessness everywhere. However, governments, NGOs, international organizations and UNHCR staff seeking to implement the Global Action Plan will be able to adapt the ideas they find in these pages to their own needs. Background Action 3 of the Global Action Plan calls on States to remove gender discrimination from nationality laws. The attainment of gender equality in nationality laws worldwide would constitute a major step forward in preventing statelessness. International human rights law provides for equal treatment of women and men. Article 9(2) of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) contains an explicit obligation whereby States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children.1 Nonetheless, at present 27 countries - in almost all parts of the world - have laws that discriminate against women in their ability to confer nationality on their children.2 1 The full text of Article 9 of CEDAW reads as follows: (1) States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men to acquire, change or retain their nationality. They shall ensure in particular that neither marriage to an alien nor change of nationality by the husband during marriage shall automatically change the nationality of the wife, render her stateless or force upon her the nationality of the husband. (2) States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children. 2 The majority of these States are found in the Middle East and North Africa (12 countries) and Sub-Saharan Africa (eight countries). Five States in Asia, as well as two States in the Americas, also do not grant mothers the same rights as fathers to confer their nationality on their children. For a full discussion on this matter, please see UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Background Note on Gender Equality, Nationality Laws and Statelessness 2015, 6 March 2015, available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/54f8369b4.html, and Equality Now, Ending Sex Discrimination in Nationality and Citizenship Laws, May 2014, available at http://goo.gl/TuA5EQ 1 CAMPAIGN TO END STATELESSNESS WITHIN 10 YE ARS