2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(1) previous chapters, Chapter 8 explains each phrase of this model legislation and the benefits of this formulation over alternatives, including the less clear and protective art 2 of the 1961 Convention. Nationality of Foundlings will serve as a valuable reference tool for scholars and researchers of international nationality and statelessness law. The annexes, compiling and analysing nationality legislation, are themselves tools that one hopes will continue to be available and updated. The book’s discussion of the burden and standard of proof for children of unknown parentage has significant implications also for similar adjudications that require proving a negative — notably, statelessness determination procedures.20 Kaneko-Iwase’s critique that the UNHCR guidance on a shared burden of proof poses challenges to certain legal systems and is unhelpfully imprecise should be taken to heart in recommendations about statelessness and refugee status determination procedures.21 Kaneko-Iwase constructs an overwhelming base of evidence that demonstrates that the term ‘foundling’, and the method and quality of protection provided to these individuals, is in need of greater clarity and consistency in state practice. Her extensive research into treaties and their preparatory materials, legislative provisions and judicial and administrative decisions identifies gaps in current protection and she provides concrete policy suggestions on how to remedy those gaps. Chapter 4 identifies no fewer than 12 situations in which people might be foundlings or of unknown parentage, with discussions of specific cases falling into each category.22 Advocates for children’s access to human rights and universal birth registration will also benefit from this volume. Questions of whether children who are abandoned or orphaned — or whose parentage is otherwise not legally established — will receive nationality is a critical matter for the child and for the community in which the child lives. As Kaneko-Iwase reminds us, UN human rights bodies have emphasised that it is ‘never in the best interests of a child to be rendered stateless’.23 Indeed, even as states have adopted increasingly strict restrictions in 20 21 ibid 193. See UNHCR, Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (Report, 2019) 34 [196]: ‘[t]hus, while the burden of proof in principle rests on the applicant, the duty to ascertain and evaluate all the relevant facts is shared between the applicant and the examiner’ See also, UNHCR, Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons (Report, 2014) 34 [89]: ‘[i]n the case of statelessness determination, the burden of proof is in principle shared, in that both the applicant and examiner must cooperate to obtain evidence and to establish the facts’. 22 23 Kaneko-Iwase (n 4) 116–58. ibid 260 quoting UNHCR, Expert Meeting: Interpreting the 1961 Statelessness Convention and Avoiding Statelessness Resulting from Loss and Deprivation of Nationality (Summary Conclusions, March 2014) 13 [62]. See also Joint General Comment No 4 (2017) of the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families and No 23 (2017) of the Committee on the Rights of the Child on State Obligations Regarding the Human Rights of Children in the Context of International Migration in Countries of Origin, Transit, Destination and Return, UN Doc CMW/C/GC/4-CRC/C/GC/23 (16 November 2017). 186