2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(1) when we are having discussions with states about the deprivation and loss of nationality.16 The prevention of statelessness amongst children who are born abroad, foundlings (who are also relevant to the 1961 Convention), international surrogacy and adoptions also requires closer guidance. These are topics that we, as the Committee on the Rights of the Child, have continued to discuss with states and states will need more guidance in moving forward. Now let me wrap up. There still remains a number of aspects of statelessness to which the Committee needs to pay close attention. The issue of arbitrary deprivation of nationality is one of them. There are a number of areas related to law and practice — especially where the gap between law and practice is absolutely huge — and the Committee needs to systematically engage with this with states that come before it. I will mention a simple example that has been highlighted by the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion. Article 1 of Decree No 15 on Lebanese Nationality clearly states that a person who is born on Lebanese state territory and did not acquire a nationality at birth is Lebanese. 17 However, because this provision of the law is hardly applied, there are a number of births taking place on the Lebanese territory that are resulting in stateless children. The second point is data collection. We have had occasions where states actually come before the Committee on the Rights of the Child and they say that ‘there are no stateless children within our jurisdiction’. They do not want to do that data collection and determination because of political reasons, economic reasons and a whole range of other considerations. What we want, as a Committee, is disaggregated data that looks at statelessness comprehensively on the basis of different criteria so that a state can actually tackle the issue at its root cause. The issue of data collection is an area that we need to continue to discuss with the states that come before the Committee. As I mentioned, the Committee has assessed and commented on the need for states to overcome structural barriers to achieve universal birth registration and there is still a lot of conversation to be had in this respect. There is a very interesting and useful guidance document that has been produced by the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, where some critical questions to consider in assessing nationality frameworks in a country are highlighted. This is something that we need to continue to imbed in our work. For example, questions such as: is an acquisition of nationality by otherwise stateless children born on the territory automatic (meaning at birth)? Alternatively, is it subject to an application procedure? If an application procedure is required, is there a time limit and are there additional requirements, such as legal residence, domicile, language and so forth that need to be taken into consideration? Is there significant discretion granted to administrative bodies in considering such applications? One of the challenges that we face as a Committee in our engagement with states — for instance, in the context of Kenya — are the instances where the different administrative committees that are involved in determining statelessness and nationality issues are granted a lot of discretion. For example, we know of cases where stateless individuals have been asked to produce their grandparents’ ID cards, including in instances where there were no IDs when the grandparents were alive. There are a lot of hoops that they need to jump and, in the process, children fall between the cracks. 16 17 CRC (n 1) art 8. Decree No 15 on Lebanese Nationality (19 January 1925) art 1 (Lebanon). 202