20. Discriminatory impact on children of Nepalese mothers and foreign fathers: As stated above, Article 8(7) of the Interim Constitution, complemented by Section 5(2) of the Citizenship Act and Section 7 of the Citizenship Rules, deny Nepali women the right to confer their citizenship to their children by descent. Instead, such children have only the option to seek naturalization. However, the discretion wielded by state authorities in relation to naturalization is extremely wide, and the overwhelming majority of naturalization applications do not result in the conferral of nationality. Research conducted by FWLD reveals that in the first six years of the implementation of these provisions, not a single naturalization application was successful. 21. Discrimination against women who have not obtained citizenship certificates prior to marriage: While there is no legal barrier to women obtaining citizenship certificates through their parents after marriage, in practice, married women are required to submit citizenship documents of their spouse and his family in order to obtain citizenship. This places women in a vulnerable position. Additionally, Nepali women who marry foreigners before having obtained their own citizenship certificate, are barred from subsequently doing so.14 This is a direct violation of Article 8(2) of the Nepal Constitution and amounts to an arbitrary deprivation of nationality. 22. Gender discrimination in conveying citizenship to foreign husbands: While Nepalese men can convey their nationality to foreign spouses and their children, Nepalese women are barred from doing so. The only path to Nepalese citizenship for foreign male spouses, is through the residence based naturalization process. 23. Discriminatory attitudes of public servants: In addition to the above examples of discriminatory law and policy, the attitudes of public servants and first instance decision makers in Nepal remain largely discriminatory towards women and patriarchal. As a result, despite the ongoing advocacy of civil society organisations and the positive jurisprudence of the Nepal Supreme Court, unfair and impractical administrative burdens and barriers continue to be imposed against women attempting to confer their citizenship to their children. THE FAILURE OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY TO REFORM DISCRIMINATORY CITIZENSHIP LAW 24. The above text provided an overview of the discriminatory nature of the Interim Constitution and 2006 Citizenship Act and Rules of Nepal. In this context, the ongoing constitution drafting process is a perfect opportunity for positive legal reform. However, the Constituent Assembly (CA) has to-date failed to deliver satisfactory reform on this extremely important issue. 25. The present Constituent Assembly of Nepal (it’s second) first met in January 2014, and one of the many issues it has been required to deliberate and draft constitutional language on, is the citizenship issue. As previous Constituent Assembly could not reach consensus on the issue of citizenship, this should have been one of the ‘contentious issues’ of discussion for the second CA. However, the Constitutional Record Study and Determination Committee (CRSD Committee) of the second CA categorized the proposed citizenship provision as a ‘settled issue’, thereby minimising opportunities for discussion in the CA. However, the current state of the text on citizenship is not an improvement – in fact, in many ways, it makes the situation even worse. Following are key areas of concern in this regard: 26. The father AND mother provision: The CA’s response to the discriminatory manner in which the “father OR mother” provision of the Interim Constitution has been implemented, is to amend it as follows: “for the child to be a citizen of descent both the father and mother need to be citizens of Nepal during the time of birth”. 14. Section 8(1)(a) of the Citizenship Act 2006. 5