PRACTICAL GUIDE ON NATIONALITY For example, this could take the form of discriminatory administrative practices that prevent the acquisition, or restoration of nationality, leading to the deprivation or loss of nationality, or which prevent access to evidence of a held nationality based on the applicant’s ethnicity, religion or political opinions. Discriminatory practices may include excessive administrative fees, unreasonable deadlines, excessive evidentiary requirements and objective impossibilities to acquire documentation substantiating a nationality that is actually held (identity card, citizenship certificate, passport). Such documentation is vital to proving the applicant’s entitlement to nationality. Where the discrimination is systematic and persistent ( 117), it can leave the person at risk of statelessness. Even where the law is not exclusionary, women and girls from minority groups may experience discrimination in practice when seeking to access nationality rights. Barriers with regard to birth registration and obtaining birth certificates hinder the ability of women to register or naturalise their children. This is especially the case for women belonging to ethnic and religious minorities, women living in conflict areas and refugee women ( 118). Those discriminatory practices aim at depriving the applicant from the rights linked to their nationality because they would not be able to exercise them in practice in the absence of the necessary evidence showing they are already nationals. When the interferences with rights linked to nationality crosses the threshold of sufficient severity, they would generally be considered as amounting to persecution or serious harm. In some cases, a state may leave a formal nationality to an individual while denying them the resulting rights of citizenship. In particular, it may not grant them the protection of the state. Similar considerations as the ones that apply to nationals who are deprived of their nationality are also applicable to applicants who hold a nationality ex lege but who are not recognised as such by their national authorities and who cannot enjoy the rights attached to their nationality (see Section 7.1.1. Deprivation of nationality as a form of persecution or serious harm). (117) UNHCR, “This is Our Home” Stateless Minorities and their Search for Citizenship, 2017 p. 7. (118) UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, Reem Alsalem - Violence against women and girls, nationality laws and statelessness, A/78/256, paragraph 12. 75