THEMATIC BRIEFING | MAY 2020 Birth registration and the prevention of statelessness in Europe 15 nationality (unless otherwise highlighted in the birth notification). In Bulgaria, Italy and Norway, there are procedures in place to later correct the child’s record, but such practices create a worrying risk that childhood statelessness may go unidentified where the laws of the mother’s country of nationality prevent her from conferring her nationality to her child born abroad due to gender discrimination.455 In countries where nationality is not recorded on the birth certificate, there is also a risk that statelessness may be missed if there is no later procedure for determining the child’s nationality. In the UK and Ukraine, for example, most people will only have their nationality determined at the point of requesting a passport, meaning that any nationality problems may only emerge when a person is at the point of starting work, higher education or seeking to travel. In Portugal, where a child is born to non-nationals, the birth registry must indicate the nationality of the parents, which would seem to be good practice, but it is unclear whether a procedure exists to determine whether the child has acquired a nationality. Issues with recognition of paternity are evident in Malta, Slovenia and Germany. In Slovenia, for children born to foreign nationals, there are reports of administrative practice preventing the registration of paternity. There are also reports of issues in Germany with recognition of paternity for non-married parents, including fees, suspension of paternal recognition due to credibility issues, and difficulties securing appointments with Civil Registries and Child Welfare Offices. Discriminatory practices in recognition of paternity in Malta In Malta, there is no clear legal framework for determining a child’s nationality in cases where they may ‘otherwise be stateless’. Practice suggests that there is no automatic assessment procedure, and there is discrimination in recognition of paternity. When the parents are married and both are Maltese, or when they are unmarried and the mother is Maltese, the assumption is that the child is Maltese. Where only the father is Maltese, a procedure must be triggered requiring evidence of paternity or else Maltese nationality is not automatically recognised for the child. In the 2014 Genovese case, the European Court of Human Rights found Malta’s decision to deny nationality to a person born to an unmarried Maltese father and British mother to be in violation of Article 14 in conjunction with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.466 7. MANDATORY REPORTING REQUIREMENTS THAT DETER PEOPLE FROM ACCESSING HEALTH AND/OR CIVIL REGISTRATION SERVICES In order to ensure that all children have their births registered regardless of their or their parents’ residence status, international norms and good practice urge States to prohibit datasharing between health or registration officials and immigration enforcement authorities.477 Good practice Most countries featured in the Statelessness Index do not have mandatory reporting requirements for public officials to report people with irregular residence status to immigration authorities, but few explicitly prohibit this in law or guidance, like Switzerland does. An explicit