METHODOLOGY SCOPE OF THE REPORT Marching for nationality rights in Nepal Credit: Forum for Women Law and Development This report is an update of our 2016 report, The State We’re In: Ending Sexism in Nationality Laws. Equality Now was very grateful in 2016 to have had the pro bono assistance of global law firm Latham & Watkins LLP, through the facilitation of TrustLaw, for the research and analysis of legislation. All the discriminatory laws identified in the current Annex of this report have been reviewed to check for any amendments post 2016 and updated. The information was then verified through a review of Concluding Observations issued by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) as well as State party reports submitted to the CEDAW Committee. In addition, wherever possible, an attempt was made to verify the legal status of discriminatory national laws with global, regional and local organizations working on the issue. It is also important to note that: • the research is based on laws accessible online as of March 2022, for the most part as translated into English. Unofficial translations were only considered where official translations were unavailable. • where there were contradictions between constitutional or legislative provisions, both provisions have been cited and the contradiction noted. The countries with discriminatory provisions in the nationality/citizenship laws are classified as countries with sex-discriminatory laws as these laws are usually followed in practice and need to be amended even if the constitution provides for equality. • the work has focused on provisions in the main relevant legislation, i.e. the constitution and/or nationality law. We have not investigated related laws or regulations (including other laws related to adoption in the case of discrimination against women regarding their ability to pass nationality to adopted children), which could contain further discriminatory provisions or, possibly, some mitigation of the discrimination. Our 2016 report focused on sex discrimination in the transferral of citizenship to children and foreign spouses; as well as an analysis of the compliance of nationality laws in terms of equality in the right to acquire, change and retain nationality with the provisions of international human rights standards. In order to clearly highlight the continuing existence of discriminatory nationality laws we focused on the crucial areas of discrimination that have a profound negative impact on the lives of individuals. In this report, we have expanded to provide high-level information and analysis of sex discrimination and good practices in certain additional categories, including the ability of women to pass nationality to adopted children; the right of LGBTQ+ individuals and same-sex couples to pass nationality to their spouse and children; and naturalization hurdles which discriminate against women with disabilities. We also note in terms of scope that: • If a provision within the law is technically discriminatory but may only have a very small discriminatory effect in practice, or none at all, then it has not been included. (For example, in some countries10 a woman cannot pass her nationality to a child born abroad if her country is at war with that country or the father is deemed to be a “foreign enemy”.) • As discussed below, some countries have special provisions for women seemingly in order to compensate for other countries’ discriminatory nationality laws. In reviewing these, we considered whether we should classify them as being discriminatory against men because they singled out safeguards for women. However, in practice we could not find an example of when men would ever need to access these provisions since they weren’t affected by the underlying circumstances these laws seek to address. • This report does not comment on discrimination which applies pre-independence or pre-reform of the law. We note, however, there will be families still discriminated against if new or amended provisions are not applied retroactively.11 Governments should remove discrimination covering all time periods from their legislation without delay and grant citizenship retroactively to those who were discriminated against, especially those who may have been rendered stateless. • Several laws contain discrimination on the basis of race/ ethnic origin, which causes distress to millions and compounds the discrimination based on sex. This should be addressed immediately. 10 E.g. Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore; see also Monaco, which though not included in this report, as it has greatly expanded the categories by which a child can obtain citizenship through his/her mother in almost all cases, but is still discriminatory per se in that fathers, unlike mothers, have unconditional rights in passing nationality to their children. 11 For example, in Singapore’s law, after 2004 children born outside Singapore can get nationality through the mother or father; this is recent enough that there will still be many children born before 2003 that are discriminated against because they were not able to get Singaporean nationality from their mother. In Tunisia, the Code of Nationality was amended in 2010, as a result of which Tunisian mothers can pass nationality to children born outside the country after 2010. However, the amending law set a narrow one-year deadline for foreign born children of a Tunisian mother and foreign father who were born before the amendment and who were over the age of 18 to apply for citizenship; as a result of which many children were left out and not able to get Tunisian nationality from their mother. THE STATE WE’RE IN: ENDING SEXISM IN NATIONALITY LAWS - 2022 EDITION | 11