 The participants did not become aware of the existence of gender discrimination in the nationality laws of their respective countries until they had their first child and, in many cases, until the point that their non-national husband left the family or died.  The negative impacts of statelessness resulting from this gender discrimination are numerous, severe and continuing and have a knock-on effect for both the women and their children. The most commonly raised impacts included: o exclusion from educational opportunities available to nationals; o limited access to healthcare, social security and other benefits available to nationals, leading to risk-taking behavior and a sense of instability and marginalization; o curtailed employment opportunities; and o psycho-social effects of anger, resentment, frustration and depression.  Most of the women who participated had taken steps to either rectify the root cause of the impacts suffered (i.e. by trying to find ways to pass on their own nationality to their children through seeking audiences with and lobbying decision-makers and collaborating with civil society groups). All went to great efforts to ameliorate the impacts of the resulting statelessness on their children (i.e. by taking multiple jobs) and identified a continuing need for psychosocial support for themselves and their children until their predicament was resolved. Roundtable with MENA women’s equality advocates On 19 October, following the dialogue with affected women and families, representatives of non-governmental organizations from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen,1 participated in a roundtable discussion. Over the last decade, women’s rights organizations in the Middle East and North Africa have engaged in advocacy campaigns to reform discriminatory nationality laws. Participants in the roundtable exchanged views on efforts to achieve law reform to overcome discrimination in nationality laws in their respective countries, sharing examples of good practices where reforms were achieved, as well as strategies for overcoming barriers to law reform in other countries. Campaigns to grant women equal rights as men in nationality matters in countries represented at the roundtable, have led to successful reform in Egypt (2004), Algeria (2005), and Morocco (2007)2. Several particularly effective good practices emerged from the Moroccan campaign. There, a network of ‘listening centers’ was created where women’s organizations recorded how the discriminatory law impacted widespread families throughout the country. These testimonials were used in the campaign which achieved wide media coverage. These organizations capitalized on momentum gained when Morocco’s Family Code was reformed in 2002 to also press for changes to gender discriminatory nationality legislation. 1 Organisation Marocaine des Droits de l’ Homme, Association Democratique des Femmes de Maroc, the Syrian Women’s League, Sisters Arab Forum (Yemen), Forum for Women in Development, (Egypt), Sister is Global Development (Jordan), Centre d'Informatique et de Documentation sur les Droits de l'Enfant et de las Femme (Algeria), the Jordanian Women’s Union. Participants from OHCHR and the Jordanian Government also attended some of the sessions. 2 Although not represented at the roundtable, campaigns also led to reforms in Iraq (2006) and Tunisia (2002 and 2010) 2