•
Coordinate efforts to carry out outreach campaigns and activities with populations
of concern, and assist them in navigating state bureaucracy by facilitating access
to the competent officials.
To harmonize domestic laws and practices with binding international norms
and standards:
•
Comprehensively review all relevant laws, regulations, and practices, particularly
those that predate the relevant international human rights treaties, to ensure their
compatibility with any international legal frameworks that apply to the country.
•
Adopt amendments to nationality and documentation of identity laws to address
existing legal gaps, as well as to cement good practices that exist as a matter of
administrative policies and are vulnerable to change.
•
Use regional forums to address shortcomings and share good practices in identity
documentation processes.
•
Assess and take into account the best interests of the child as a primary consideration in all actions or decisions that concern the right to nationality or documentation of identity of a child.
The right to nationality, the importance of protecting individuals from statelessness, and the right to documents of identity have gained the attention of the international community as essential human rights. Global initiatives such as the #IBelong
Campaign to End Statelessness, led by the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees, as well as the United Nations Global Sustainable Development Goals agenda,
are particularly relevant platforms to address some of the issues detailed in this report.
States should capitalize on the technical capacity and funding opportunities that these
platforms create to incorporate concrete actions to protect the right to nationality of each
child born in the Americas, as well as the means to prove that right.
As this study makes clear, there remains a significant gap between the promise of
jus soli citizenship and the reality on the ground in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. These
three countries—and others in the region—must do more to ensure that the right to
citizenship becomes a reality for all people born in the Americas.
24
E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y A N D R E C O M M E N D AT I O N S
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