aim to exclude or have the effect of excluding people who are considered as foreign”, with an estimated 75% of the world’s stateless people belonging to minority groups.9 Migration, displacement, conflict, the redrawing of borders, lack of birth registration, child separation or abandonment, and lack of recognition of family relations are all factors that can expose children to a heightened risk of statelessness. Finally, statelessness is often inherited, locking generations out of nationality and trapping both adults and children in a cycle of exclusion and discrimination. Family relations: The right to have one’s family relations legally established or recognized is a right in itself and is essential to ensuring the right to a name and nationality. Article 16 of CEDAW affirms that there should be no discrimination in the establishment of family relations. Specifically, each person has a family history – genetic, gestational, social and legal – that contributes to his or her identity and origins. Family relations include connections that arise as a result of this history, continuity or separation, encompassing birth, adoptive and intending parents in surrogacy arrangements, gamete donors, siblings, grandparents and others. Without transparent and accurate information about family origins, children’s identity is incomplete. This may lead to children being excluded from benefits of legal parentage such as child support, and hereditary and maintenance laws. It may also lead to statelessness. Comprehensive information about family origins is further essential to ensure the highest attainable standard of health and well-being. Deprived of family health history, children and affected adults have less information about their genetic health risks.10 A further layer of complexity may be added to these situations, when multiple States are involved in the creation, modification and/or falsification of the child’s identity. Legal challenges may arise in identifying which State, courts or authorities have jurisdiction to decide on identity issues and which laws apply. Further, Civil Registration systems are generally not set up to ensure the automatic recognition of the child’s legal status across borders, from another State.11 Challenges equally arise when information about origins is not stored appropriately, including in perpetuity and/or accessible, including in emergency situations, where records may be lost as discussed earlier. 2. Current efforts related to the right to identity Significant efforts12 are now underway within the UN Legal Identity Agenda and other frameworks to ensure universal birth registration and legal identity to all. Whilst these efforts have primarily focused on strengthening and implementing digital identity systems, other aspects of identity such as nationality and family relations13 have received less attention. Given the risks and opportunities associated with the legal identity agenda for the enjoyment of these identity rights, further work is needed in terms of preserving all these key elements of a child’s right to an identity – including addressing new questions that arise around the use of new technologies, such as biometrics, especially its relevance for children under five and newborns, data protection and privacy, and certain assisted reproductive technology practices. Concrete and innovative efforts are required in terms of improving access to justice (SDG 16.3) and the States obligation to speedily re-establish the child’s identity whenever there are missing elements. This must include ensuring CRVS systems are set up to include information about the child’s family or birth histories, including when they are modified. Greater political will is needed to change laws, policies and practices, including lifting the statute of limitations for cases involving children to restore missing or falsified elements. The Global Alliance to End Statelessness coordinated by UNHCR has a thematic working group on ending childhood statelessness co-chaired by UNICEF and CHIP which seeks to expand and strengthen international 9 UN Human Rights Council, Impact of the arbitrary deprivation of nationality on the enjoyment of the rights of children concerned, and existing laws and practices on accessibility for children to acquire nationality, inter alia, of the country in which they are born, if they otherwise would be stateless, 16 December 2015, A/HRC/31/29. 10 For example, World Health Organization. (n.d.). Breast cancer: prevention and control. https://www.who.int/cancer/detection/breastcancer/en/. 11 Michaels, R., Ruiz Abou-Nigm, V., and van Loon, H. (eds). (2021). The Private Side of Transforming our World - UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and the Role of Private International Law, Intersentia Online, https://www.intersentiaonline.com/library/the-private-side-of-transformingour-world-un-sustainable-development-goals-2030-and-the-role-of-p 12 See OHCHR report A/HRC/59/61: Use of digital technologies to achieve universal birth registration 13 See work of Child Identity Protection (www.child-identity.org).