Birth registration and the prevention of statelessness in Europe • Remove any requirements for public officials to report people with irregular residence status to immigration authorities and monitor practice to ensure this does not happen • Introduce legal safeguards (‘firewalls’) to prohibit public officials from reporting people to immigration authorities when accessing healthcare or civil registration services • Issue targeted, accessible, public information to inform people about their rights to access healthcare and civil registration services and how their personal data is shared or used • Ensure full legal safeguards are in place so that any child born on the territory who would otherwise be stateless acquires nationality • Build the capacity of civil registry officials through training and guidance to identify indications of statelessness during birth registration • Avoid entering data about the nationality of children born to foreign parents based merely on the impression or presumption of the birth registration officer, instead ensure mechanisms are in place for civil registry officials to refer identified cases for nationality determination to a clear procedure under a designated competent authority with the necessary expertise and safeguards • Ensure that a child’s nationality is determined as soon as possible after birth (and never more than five years) and in line with their best interests and other relevant international obligations • Ensure that children are treated as nationals for the purposes of accessing their fundamental rights while their nationality is determined • Improve research, standards, guidance, and information about law and policy frameworks for the determination of the child’s nationality • Improve cooperation between local, national, regional and international institutions to collect and publish accurate birth registration data • Increase efforts to gather and publish data on birth registration rates among populations disproportionately facing barriers to registration, including undocumented migrants, refugees, members of minority groups, people in residential care, immigration detention or prisons, asylum reception centres, informal settlements, and homeless people 23