‘Legal Identity for All’ and Statelessness A range of international human rights standards, starting from art 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (‘UDHR’), 10 reinforced by art 16 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (‘ICCPR’), 11 establish that every person has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. Although there has been little clarification on detailed content of this formulation, it ‘expresses the right and the capacity of each human being to be the holder of rights and obligations under the law’, 12 enabling a person to assert rights, to enforce contracts or to defend a case in court. 13 This right is not dependent on existence in any register nor on holding official identification papers; it is already attributed by international law. Indeed, neither the drafters of the UDHR nor those of the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child considered it necessary to include the right to birth registration as a free-standing right — though both proclaimed the right to a name and nationality. 14 It was only with the adoption of the ICCPR in 1966 that a right to birth registration was enshrined, based on concern about the rights of refugee and displaced children, and those born out of wedlock — and freed by this date from the colonial states’ hesitancy about the implications of universal birth registration for the rights of colonised populations. 15 Article 24 of the ICCPR provides for every child to have the right to a name, to be registered immediately after birth and to acquire a nationality. The same commitments are reinforced (with variations in wording) by art 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (‘CRC’) 16 — adopted in 1989 and by which every state in the world except for the United States has agreed to be bound — and art 29 of the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. 17 Article 8 of the CRC also introduced the overarching concept of ‘identity’ to international law, establishing the child’s right ‘to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law’. 18 The product of advocacy efforts by the newly democratic Argentinian government in the wake of forced adoptions during the military dictatorship, and building on existing Latin American frameworks of recognition for child rights, 19 art 8 places 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, GA Res 217A (III), UN GAOR, 3rd sess, 183rd plen mtg, UN Doc A/810 (10 December 1948). International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature 16 December 1966, 999 UNTS 171 (entered into force 23 March 1976). Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, General Comment on the Right to Recognition as a Person before the Law in the Context of Enforced Disappearances, UN Doc A/HRC/19/58/Rev.1 (2 March 2012). Sarah Joseph and Melissa Castan, The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Cases, Materials, and Commentary (3rd edn, Oxford University Press 2013) 329–39. Declaration on the Rights of the Child, GA Res 1386 (XIV), UN GAOR, 14th sess, 841st plen mtg, Agenda Item 64, Supp No 16, UN Doc A/4354 (20 November 1959) principle 3. Dominique Marshall, ‘Birth Registration and the Promotion of Children’s Rights in the Interwar Years’ in Breckenridge and Szreter (n 5) 449, 464–70. Convention on the Rights of the Child, opened for signature 20 November 1989, 1577 UNTS 3 (entered into force 2 September 1990) (‘CRC’). International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, opened for signature 18 December 1990, 2220 UNTS 3 (entered into force 1 July 2003). CRC (n 16) art 8. Rita Arditti, Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina (University of California Press 1999); Anne-Emmanuelle Birn, ‘Uruguay’s Child Rights Approach to Health: What Role for Civil Registration?’ in Breckenridge and Szreter (n 5) 415. 251