INTRODUCTION We have seen good progress in achieving equality in nationality laws with 19 countries making partial or full legal reforms and making significant commitments at the regional and global levels since Equality Now began in-depth work advocating for the reform of sex discriminatory nationality and citizenship laws globally almost a decade ago. Since the March 2016 launch of The State We’re In: Ending Sexism in Nationality Laws alone, four countries we highlighted - Guinea, Lesotho, Nauru and Solomon Islands - have achieved full legal equality in nationality rights and another eight have achieved important reforms or taken important steps towards reform. Feminist movements and coalitions, including the Global Campaign for Equality Nationality Rights of which Equality Now is a founding steering committee member, have contributed significantly to this progress. When borders closed during the pandemic, children of noncitizen fathers in countries with discriminatory nationality laws were often trapped outside of the country due to failure of the state to recognize their right to their mother’s citizenship. Inside some countries, women with non-citizen children and spouses were denied pandemic-related family aid and social benefits.4 An ecosystem approach to nationality rights, and legal equality generally, is essential, starting with guaranteeing and enforcing constitutional equality. For example, if the United States had the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)5 in its constitution, US sex discriminatory nationality provisions based on residency might well have been struck down earlier.6 Despite this progress, sex discriminatory nationality laws still exist, however, in 49 countries (25% of UN member states). Discriminatory nationality laws have an enormous impact on women and their families, often violating their rights to health, education, employment, and non-discrimination on the basis of race1, ethnicity and religion etc. They also limit women’s participation in public life. Other nationality provisions based on and feeding into gender stereotypes which are still in place in the US could be struck down under an Equal Rights Amendment. And several countries continue to have contradictory nationality provisions in their nationality or citizenship acts which must be harmonized with either citizenship and/or equality provisions in their constitutions. Other laws, regulations and procedures affecting nationality rights that must be scrutinized and put in place include birth7 and marriage registration, among others. Women are also less protected from gender-based violence as they experience greater difficulty in leaving abusive relationships when their, and/or their children’s, citizenship depends on an abusive spouse. Girls may even face child marriage in order to gain legal citizenship status. As the world begins to build back from the COVID-19 pandemic, we hope governments will find new inspiration to undertake all necessary legal reforms so that all women and men can enjoy equal nationality rights and participate as full citizens, at all levels of society. The COVID-19 pandemic2, and armed or political conflict and displacement caused by other crises have exacerbated the effect of gender-discriminatory laws, resulting in increased family separations, statelessness and other unnecessary and unjust hardships as a result of patriarchal behavior and unequal power relations3. Conference for Arab States on Good Practices & Regional Opportunities to Strengthen Women’s Nationality Rights, 2017 1 See Thematic Report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance on “Racial discrimination in the context of citizenship, nationality and immigration status,” para. 12 re “importance of an intersectional approach to racial discrimination in the context of citizenship, nationality and immigration laws that accounts for the compounding and differential effects of sex and gender, among other factors. States continue to enforce patriarchal laws that use gender-based discrimination to achieve racial, ethnic and religious exclusion.” available at https://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/52; See also https://equalnationalityrights.org/images/zdocs/GCENR-et-al--Submission-regarding-2021-report-on-20thanniversary-of-DDPA-.pdf 2 In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights gathered data from national partners and released a statement and press release in April 2020 on the impact of COVID on families affected by gender-discriminatory nationality laws. 3 See Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights, Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Migrants to inform the report 1 on Human Rights Violations at International Borders: Trends, Prevention and Accountability – Recognizing the Particular Vulnerability of Women & Children, https://equalnationalityrights.org/images/zdocs/GCENR-et-al-Submission-SRMigrants---Human-Rights-Violations-at-International-Borders.pdf. 4 Id. Gender based discrimination in nationality laws has exacerbated the hardships faced by the families of, for example, Lebanese, Malaysian and Omani women with non-citizen spouses and children during the COVID-19 pandemic. 5 For more information on the current status of the ERA see https://www.equalitynow.org/news_and_insights/era-in-2022-whats-next/ 6 In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court in Sessions v. Morales-Santana, 137 S. Ct. 1678 (2017) found unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment the nationality provision which required unmarried American fathers to satisfy a longer residency time period than mothers in order to pass on citizenship to their children born abroad. A previous case, Flores-Villar v. United States, 564 U.S. 2010 (2011) affirmed the constitutionality of the residency provision without providing a written opinion. 7 For example, Section 10 of the Births and Deaths Registration Act 51 of 1992 was found unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court of South Africa (Case CCT 101/20), in part because it limited the right of unmarried fathers to register their child’s birth, and consequently discriminated against children born to unmarried parents including in limiting their access to nationality. See also, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR and UNICEF: Background Note on Sex Discrimination in Birth Registration, 6 July 2021, available at: https://www.refworld.org/ docid/60e2d0554.html THE STATE WE’RE IN: ENDING SEXISM IN NATIONALITY LAWS - 2022 EDITION | 7