• The registration of automatic (ex lege) acquisition or loss of nationality, including in situations of State succession for habitual and lawful residents, should not require written affidavits, even though States are generally advised to keep written records of all decisions on nationality. • The fees for acquiring, retaining, losing, recovering or certifying nationality and for related administrative and judicial reviews should be reasonable. Laws and practices that particularly affect women Some States automatically alter a woman’s nationality status when she marries a non-national. A woman may then become stateless if she does not automatically receive the nationality of her husband or if her husband has no nationality. A woman can also become stateless if, after she receives her husband’s nationality, the marriage is dissolved and she loses the nationality acquired through marriage, but her original nationality is not automatically restored. To avoid these problems: • The 1957 Convention on the Nationality of Married Women and the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women seek to grant women equal rights with men to acquire, change or retain nationality. In accordance with the principles contained in these conventions, the husband’s nationality status should not automatically change the nationality of the wife, render her stateless, nor make mandatory her acquisition of his nationality. • In States where women do not have equal rights with men and may automatically lose their citizenship when they marry or where women have to renounce their former citizenship when they marry, those States should introduce provisions into their citizenship legislation enabling women whose marriages have been dissolved to automatically re-acquire their former citizenship through a simple declaration. Automatic loss of nationality Some States automatically revoke the nationality of an individual who has left his/her country or who resides abroad. Revocation of nationality, which can occur just a few months after the individual’s departure, is often associated with faulty administrative practices in which the individual concerned is not made aware that he/she risks losing his/her nationality if he/she doesn’t register regularly with the country’s authorities. If the individual is a naturalized citizen, rather than one who had been born in the State or who acquired nationality through descent, even regular registration may be insufficient to guarantee that nationality will not be revoked. Statelessness is often a direct result of these practices. To avoid this problem: • Article 7 (3) of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness stipulates that an individual shall not lose his/her nationality, and so become stateless, on the grounds of departure, residence abroad, failure to register or any similar 33