Burundi’s National Legal Framework 12. Article 12 of Burundi’s 2005 Constitution enshrines equality in nationality to children born of Burundi men or women and also enshrines the entitlement of all citizen to equal rights and legal protection, without discrimination on the basis of gender. “Children born of Burundi men or women have the same rights of nationality according to the law.”4 “All Burundi people are equal in merit and dignity. All citizens enjoy the same rights and have the right to the same legal protection. No Burundi citizen may be excluded from the social, economic, or political life of the nation due to his or her race, language, religion, gender or ethnic origin.”5 13. Despite the Constitutional protection of equality and prohibition of discrimination, the Burundian Nationality Code of 2000 (which predates the Constitution but has not been amended to bring it in line with the Constitution) remains gender discriminatory. Accordingly, Burundian women cannot pass nationality to children born inside or outside the country on an equal basis with Burundian men. Article 2 of the 2000 Nationality Code does not allow mothers to transfer nationality to children except when maternal filiation is established when they are born out of wedlock to unknown fathers or if disowned by their fathers: “A person is Burundian by birth if he or she is: (a) the legitimate child, even if born abroad, of a father who is on the day of the birth, or, in the case of the death of the father before the birth of the child, who was on the day of his death, Burundian; (b) the illegitimate child of a mother of any filiation that is the object of a voluntary procedure of recognition, legitimation or judicial recognition establishing filiation with a Burundian father; (c) an illegitimate child whose paternal filiation is not known and that is the object of a voluntary procedure of judicial recognition establishing his or her filiation with a Burundian mother; (d) a child that has been repudiated by his or her father but whose mother is a Burundian national on the date of the repudiation.”6 14. Article 10 of the 2000 Nationality Code allows the foreign spouse of a male Burundian citizen to automatically acquire Burundian citizenship. Burundian women are not granted the same right as Burundian men to confer nationality on a foreign spouse: “A foreign woman acquires, by marriage, the nationality of her Burundian spouse by simple declaration”7 4 The Constitute Project, Burundi’s Constitution of 2005, available at: https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Burundi_2005.pdf [accessed 23/6/2017] 5 Ibid. 6 Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Burundi: Citizenship legislation; procedures for obtaining citizenship; whether dual citizenship is possible and, if so, how to obtain it; procedures for renouncing citizenship and the necessary documents; grounds for revoking citizenship, 22 January 2007, BDI102295.FE, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/485ba8577.html [accessed 28 June 2017] 7 Ibid.