SOLVING STATELESSNESS
cases of State succession67 as well as both direct68 and indirect69
discrimination. The strongest recommendations are those which deal
with arbitrary denial or deprivation of nationality. In 2012 Jordan’s
withdrawal of nationality from individuals of Palestinian origin was
identified as a violation of international law, in particular Article 24
of the ICCPR and Article 7 of the CRC, despite reported safeguards
in the application of the law.70 The fact that the provisions of other
treaties were cited demonstrates the extent to which the treaty bodies
are willing to make recommendations drawing on the State’s other
international law obligations. In this case it is clear that the Committee
wished to highlight the particular problems with respect to the
deprivation of nationality from children, including as a result of the
automatic extension of the withdrawal of nationality to the children
when the father’s nationality was revoked.
In 2012 recommendations were made to several States to remove gender
discrimination from their nationality law,71 but no recommendations
on this topic were made between 2013 and 2015.72 On one occasion
the Committee on Racial Discrimination explicitly recalled “that the
scope of national sovereignty with regard to nationality is limited in
terms of respect for human rights, specifically the principle of nondiscrimination” and recommended that the State respect the principle
of non-discrimination with regard to access to nationality.73
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
CERD, Concluding observations on the combined twelfth to sixteenth periodic
reports of the Sudan, 12 June 2015, CERD/C/SDN/CO/12-16, para. 19.
CERD, Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination: Kuwait, 4 April 2012, CERD/C/KWT/CO/15-20, paras. 17-18.
CERD, Concluding observations on the combined fifteenth to twenty-first
periodic reports of Iraq, 22 September 2014, CERD/C/IRQ/CO/15-21, para. 17.
CERD, Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination: Jordan, 4 April 2012, CERD/C/JOR/CO/13-17, para. 12.
Ibid., para. 11; CERD, Concluding observations of the Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination: Qatar, 13 April 2012, CERD/C/QAT/
CO/13-16, para. 16; CERD, Concluding observations: Kuwait, supra n68,
para. 18; CERD, Concluding observations concerning the sixteenth, seventeenth
and eighteenth periodic reports of Senegal, 24 October 2012, CERD/C/SEN/
CO/16-18, para. 19.
Two States which maintain gender discriminatory nationality laws were
reviewed in this period: Iraq in 2014 and Sudan in 2015. However, Oman,
which was reviewed in 2016, did receive a recommendation on this subject.
CERD, Concluding observations on the combined second to fifth periodic
reports of Oman, 6 June 2016, CERD/C/OMN/CO/25, paras. 25-26.
CERD, Concluding observations on the thirteenth and fourteenth periodic
37