unmarried Maltese mother and an unmarried Maltese father.40 30. States should also put in place measures to ensure universal birth registration, regardless of the residence or documentation status of their parents or family members, which is key to children effectively exercising their right to a nationality. Birth registration is vital because it provides official evidence of key facts such as birthplace and parentage, without which the child can face issues proving their entitlement to nationality.41 In Malta, birth registration is not problematic in law, but there are reports of barriers to undocumented parents registering births in practice, or authorities refusing to register births where there are inconsistencies in the parents’ documentation. The document provided at birth registration does not contain information about the child's nationality, although it contains information about the parents and place of birth, and there is no legal framework to determine the nationality of a child at birth or afterwards. These barriers to birth registration can result in challenges for children to either acquire or evidence their nationality, contributing to the risk of children growing up stateless in Malta.42 Recommendations 31. Based on the above information, the co-submitting organisations urge reviewing States to make the following recommendations to Malta: I. Accede to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. II. Remove reservations to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. III. Consider acceding to the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families and the European Convention on Nationality and the Convention on the Avoidance of Statelessness in Relation to State Succession. IV. Improve the recording of statelessness by harmonising and defining statistical categories used by different agencies, counting stateless individuals in the national census, and ensuring that registration officials are trained to accurately identify and record statelessness. 40 Maltese Citizenship Act, Chapter 188 Section 5(2)&(3) in conjunction with Section 17(1)(a), available at: http://www.justiceservices.gov.mt/DownloadDocument.aspx?app=lom&itemid=8702&l=1; UNHCR: Mapping Statelessness in Malta, August 2014, pp. 36-38, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/546dae5d4.html. 41 European Parliament, Resolution on minimum standards for minorities in the EU (2018); UN Human Rights Council, The right to a nationality: women and children, Resolution A/HRC/RES/20/4 (2012); Joint general comment No. 4 (2017) of the CMW and No. 23 (2017) of the CRC on State obligations regarding the human rights of children in the context of international migration in countries of origin, transit, destination, and return; and Joint general comment No. 3 (2017) of the CMW and No. 22 (2017) of the CRC on the general principles regarding the human rights of children in the context of international migration; UNHCR, Guidelines on Statelessness No. 4 (2012); Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration; Global Compact on Refugees; Council of Europe: ECRI General Policy Recommendation No. 16 on safeguarding irregularly present migrants from discrimination (2016); Council of Europe, Recommendation CM/Rec(2009)13 and explanatory memorandum of the Committee of Ministers to member states on the nationality of children (2009). 42 Civil Code, Chapter 16, Section 272, Article 278, available at: http://www.justiceservices.gov.mt/DownloadDocument.aspx?app=lom&itemid=8580; UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Concluding Observations on the second periodic report of Malta, adopted by the Committee at its sixty-second session (14 January–1 February 2013), 18 June 2013, CRC/C/MLT/CO/2, paras. 34-35, available at: http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CRC%2fC%2fMLT%2fCO%2f2&Lang=en; UNHCR Country Office, Malta; aditus foundation. 9