6. ANNEX Advocates for Justice and Human Rights Asia Pacific Office 10/1 Soi Ari 2 Phaholyouthin Road Samsennai, Phayathai Bangkok 10400 Thailand His Excellency U Win Myint Office of the President Republic of the Union of Myanmar Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar t: +66 (0)2 619 8477/8478 f: +66 (0)2 619 8479 19 June 2019 Subject: aligning the Child Rights Bill with international human rights law Your Excellency, We respectfully share this commentary and recommendation regarding the Child Rights Bill (“the Bill”), submitted by Myanmar’s Union Parliament to your Office on 7 June 2019. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), composed of eminent judges and lawyers from all regions of the world, promotes human rights and the rule of law by using legal expertise to strengthen national and international justice systems. The ICJ has its headquarters in Geneva, its Asia Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok, and has had a presence in Myanmar since 2014, working with a range of governmental and non-governmental justice sector actors. The objectives of this Bill are generally welcome, particularly the stated objective to implement Myanmar’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (the CRC). However, the ICJ notes that the specific section related to nationality/citizenship does not appear consistent with this stated objective of the Bill, and if implemented would therefore violate the State’s international legal obligations under the CRC. Article 7 of the CRC protects the right of a child to acquire a nationality/citizenship, and obliges States to ensure that national laws do not result in a child being stateless: 1) The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents; 2) States Parties shall ensure the implementation of these rights in accordance with their national law and their obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field, in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless [emphasis added]. Based upon drafts viewed by the ICJ, the Bill does not protect the legal right of a child to acquire a nationality/citizenship, nor does it satisfy the State’s related obligation to prevent statelessness. In a draft viewed by the ICJ, section 22 reads: ေမြးဖြားေၾကာင္း မွတ္ပုံတင္သည့္ ကေလးသူငယ္တုိင္းသည္ ႏုိင္ငံသားျဖစ္မႈဆုိင္ရာ အခြင့္အေရးကုိ တည္ဆဲဥပေဒပါ ျပဌာန္းခ်က္မ်ားႏွင့္အညီသာလွ်င္ရရွိေစရမည္္။ (Unofficial translation by the ICJ: “Every child registered for birth shall have the right to citizenship only in accordance with provisions under existing law”). Currently, section 10 of the existing 1993 Child Law is formulated in a similar manner (although without recognizing the right to registration at birth), and authorities have widely interpreted this to mean that a child can only acquire citizenship upon fulfilling requirements of the 1982 Citizenship Law and its bylaws. The content and implementation of the 1982 Law, which primarily confers citizenship on the basis of membership of a “national race” is highly discriminatory and arbitrary. This has contributed to statelessness throughout the country, undermining the rule of law and in violation of the constitutional guarantee for equal rights and equal protections before the law (section 347). In its current form, the aforementioned section of the 15