2030", and the decisions of the first Ministerial Conference on "Women and the achievement of peace and security in the Arab region", held by the League of Arab States and UN Women in Cairo in September 2016, and the Regional Expert Meeting "Our children...Our Future: Belonging and Legal Identity", held by the League of Arab States in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in October 2016 in Cairo, as well as the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and the 2030 Sustainable Development Plan. Noting that the longer conflicts and conditions of instability and occupation persist, the greater the number of refugees and displaced persons will be in the Arab region and beyond, which threatens the rights and safety of children and affected families, who are increasingly suffering in the absence of legal documents that determine their identity, nationality and social status. Consequently, this will create a future generation of children who do not have birth certificates or identity papers, which may expose them to exploitation in all its forms. And based on the discussions and deliberations of the Ministerial Conference, which focused on establishing and protecting the rights of refugee children, who bear the greatest burden and the negative repercussions of armed conflicts, terrorism and occupation witnessed by a number of Arab countries, by adopting strategies and action plans that guarantee their rights and protect them in the situation of displacement and asylum; and these discussions emphasized the importance of building on existing efforts to promote women's rights in the area of citizenship and to promote gender equality in the acquisition, change, retention or conferring of nationality in the region, in line with the commitments of Member States, the international human rights conventions ratified by Member States, and their national laws, thereby limiting discrimination and the risk of exploitation and the abuse of women and children. And in recognition of everyone’s right to legal identity, as provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ratified by Member States and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child. We the participants at the Ministerial Meeting on “Belonging and Legal Identity” Recalling also the traditions of the Arab region and the principles set out in the Arab Charter on Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which promotes the right of all persons to legal identity, family life and family unity, as well as the 2014 Sharjah Principles for the Protection of Refugee Children, which sets out measures to ensure that refugee children enjoy these rights in particular; Affirming the commitment of the Arab region to ensure life with dignity, and to recognition as an equal person before the law for all without discrimination, as enshrined in the Arab Charter on Human Rights, including articles 5 and 9; Commending the experiences of the Arab States and the steps taken to promote women's rights and equality with regards to nationality; Welcoming also recent actions by States to reform their nationality laws or to give a clear commitment to reform to grant equal nationality rights for women and men;