UNHCR and CRTD.A Regional Dialogue on Gender Equality, Nationality and Statelessness Overview and Key Findings UNHCR and the Collective for Research and Training on Development – Action (CRTD-A), a women’s rights NGO in Lebanon, co-convened a Regional Dialogue on Gender Equality and Statelessness in Beirut from 17-19 October 2011. The objectives of this meeting were to hear testimonies of how families from countries in the MENA region have been affected by gender-discriminatory laws that deny mothers the right to pass their nationality on to their children, in some instances resulting in statelessness; analyze these experiences from the complementary perspectives of gender equality and prevention of statelessness; and share regional good practices and forward-looking strategies for achieving reform to gender discriminatory nationality laws in countries throughout the region. Dialogue with Affected Women and Families On 17 and 18 October, representatives of eight families from five countries testified to the struggles they faced due to statelessness arising from gender-discriminatory nationality laws. Women from Syria, Jordan, Yemen, and Lebanon recounted their personal experiences of how they had married foreign men and how their children became stateless because they were unable to acquire the citizenship of their fathers and because the mothers were barred by discriminatory nationality laws from passing their citizenship to their children. In all of their cases, their children were not able to acquire the citizenship of their foreign fathers because these men did not take steps to register the children with their foreign consulates in the countries in which they were living before their marriages dissolved, either through death of the father or separation from the mother. Although left as the sole custodians of their children, these mothers have been unable to pass their citizenship to their children, resulting in their children’s statelessness. Two men explained how the fact that their forefathers did not register their families in Lebanon combined with their inability to acquire Lebanese citizenship from their mothers due to the gender-discriminatory nationality law has rendered them stateless. In contrast, one woman from Morocco shared how her family has benefited from recent law reform that has allowed her children to acquire Moroccan citizenship and overcome prior instability in their family life. This woman married a foreign refugee living in Morocco and because of their inter-marriage and her previous inability to pass Moroccan citizenship to her spouse or children had faced difficulties in maintaining a stable family presence in Morocco. Testimonies of several participants can be found at in Annex A. The following common themes and findings emerged from the two-day dialogue with the women and families:  The dialogue revealed a shared experience of gender discrimination leading to statelessness through the operation of nationality legislation, which prevents women from passing their nationality to their children and because of the lack of any effective legal safeguard against statelessness. 1