his work permit, he was deported to Iraq and it was difficult for him to convince the Moroccan authorities to issue him with another work permit. In 2007, Zarouk gave birth to her daughter. By this time the law had changed and she was able confer Moroccan nationality upon her daughter. When she went to register her daughter, the Moroccan authorities told her that she was also retroactively able to confer her nationality on her son. Now both her children are Moroccan. Zarouk has now hired a private lawyer to help her transmit her nationality to her husband. She sees this as the most important goal for her family and fears that without Moroccan nationality, her husband could be deported again. For her, being able to transmit her nationality to her husband is the only way for them to lead a stable family life. Bahyryeh (Yemen) Bahyryeh, who married a Jordanian citizen (of Palestinian origin), says she was ‘in a deep sleep about the Yemeni nationality law’ before she separated from her husband in 1994. Following her separation from her husband, she became aware that as a woman she was not able to confer her nationality upon her children and became fearful that she would have no grounds to prevent her husband from claiming that the children were Jordanian and taking them from her. The impacts of not being able to confer her nationality on her children became acutely apparent when she had to travel to Jordan for medical treatment – without identity documents or passports her children were unable to travel with their mother. They suffered other impacts too, in terms of education, healthcare and social security, as without Yemeni nationality her children were not entitled to these services. It was only by going through the humiliation of asking for the help of family, friends and political contacts that she was able to obtain similar entitlements given to children born to Yemeni men. In 1998 she obtained a divorce. Through her sister, who was a member of the Yemeni Women’s League, she became involved in women’s associations and lobbied parliamentary members to reform Yemen’s gender discriminatory nationality law. In 2003, the Government of Yemen passed a decree which partially remedied the problems in the Nationality Law. The Decree permitted women who were either widowed, divorced or whose husbands were declared mentally unfit, to pass on their Yemeni nationality to their children. Although there has been some reform, Bahyryeh still feels angry that a woman cannot pass on her Yemeni nationality to her children when she is married to a foreigner, in the same way as a Yemeni man. She asks “why are the children of a Yemeni woman considered as though they were the fruit of another tree?” T (Jordan) T is a Jordanian citizen. She has four daughters from a marriage to a Palestinian man. Her eldest daughter (19) was born in the United States. With U.S. citizenship, this daughter is able to obtain an official Jordanian residence permit and official identity documents. T’s other three daughters (18, 14, and 4) are stateless. Upon her marriage, T received a marriage certificate with a stamp indicating that she is not able to pass her citizenship on to her children. But T only realized the consequences of this when her second 5