Childhood Statelessness i European Courts: An Avoidable Crisis 15 Figure 2 Forty percent of cases with multiple litigants addressed topics of surrogacy and/or LGBTQ+ parents. Courts face an increasing number of cases involving reproductive rights and children born through circumstances controversial in certain jurisdictions. One consequence of the legal confusion surrounding these delicate issues may be statelessness for the children in question.79 Within this sample of cases, the ECtHR, the CJEU, and courts in Austria, France, Poland, Spain all ruled in favor of these children and their parents, “interpret[ing] the relevant laws so as to ensure children’s access to their legal identity and nationality.”80 There were no negative cases from this sample involving reproductive issues. Perhaps regarding reproductive matters in which litigation is rooted in how a child came to exist it is impossible to avoid linking that child litigant with his or her parent(s). Notably, these are not matters of asylum, at least not in this sample of cases. Not being matters of asylum or forced migration, it follows somewhat predictably that an additional similarity among these surrogacy and/or LGBTQ+ cases that emerged was that all litigants involved were either from Europe or North America – the Global North. It is worth noting that 100 percent of the negative cases with multiple litigants all present litigants associated with the Global South (e.g., Cameroon, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Bangladesh). Such a statistic might be expected, as the reality that statelessness often results from the volatility and violence in countries of origin and several of those conflicted states are considered to be within the Global South.81 What should not be expected, however, is for children’s cases to be disregarded in light of their parents’ cases, or for their cases to be blurred with their parents to the point that their individual claims become lost. In the three cases with a parent/child litigant combination and negative outcome, the children’s cases were not analyzed separately and/or the principle of best interests of the child was not genuinely considered or discussed.82 In K.A, the court stated that because the applicant (born in Ireland) was an infant, “the application was made on her behalf by her father and why the substantive claims made on her behalf relate to the 79 Marianna Iliadou, ‘International Surrogacy and Stateless Children: Article 7 UNCRC and the Harmful Effects of Statelessness’ (2024) 5 Amicus Curiae 474. 80 Katja Swider, ‘The Statelessness Case Law Database: LGBTQ+ families, surrogacy and the legal identity of unsanctioned babies’ (7 October 2021), para 5 <https://www.statelessness.eu/updates/blog/statelessness-case-law-database-lgbtq-families-surrogacy-and-legal-identity> accessed 17 March 2025. 81 UNHCR, ‘Statelessness Policy brief’(August 2024) <www.unhcr.org/ibelong/wp-content/uploads/Statelessness-Policy-Brief-2024-final. pdf> accessed 20 January 2025. 82 K.A. v. Refugee Appeals Tribunal and Another (2014) IEHC 223; A,B,C,D,E gegen Staatsekretariat für Migration, F-6073/2014 (2017) Switzerland Federal Administrative Court (Bundesverwaltungsgericht); E3, N3 and ZA v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, (2022) EWHC 1133 (2022) UK High Court of Justice Queen’s Bench Division Administrative Court.