T H E G L O B A L S TAT E O F C I T I Z E N S H I P Global Campaigns for Equal Nationality Rights It used to be common practice for states to discriminate based on sex in their citizenship law. The general logic was that a family should have one nationality (as it would have one surname) – the father’s nationality would extend to the whole family. Thus, upon marriage, the female spouse would acquire the nationality of her husband and subsequently lose her own. The result was that many women wound up becoming stateless if the marriage ended. The Hague Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Law (1930) launched a global campaign to safeguard women’s nationality. However, it was not until the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Nationality of Women that the principle that marriage or its dissolution would no longer affect the nationality of a woman, and her children, was established. In 1957, the Convention on the Nationality of Married Women established the independent nationality of married women and was adopted by the UN General Assembly. The most consequential piece of international law that promises equality in citizenship acquisition, loss, and transmission is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women 15 (CEDAW), adopted by the UN in 1979. Article 9 of the Convention protects against discrimination in citizenship law, stating that “States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men to acquire, change or retain their nationality” and “States Parties shall grant women equal rights with men with respect to the nationality of their children.” Since then, many countries have reformed their citizenship laws to not differentiate between men and women. However, even though all individuals enjoy the right to a nationality under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is still up to each sovereign state to decide the rules relating to its acquisition and loss. This means that there is substantial variation across the world in states’ citizenship laws, and the reason why inequality persists despite international legal guarantees. Recently, there has been an even greater push to end sex discrimination in citizenship law through the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, which seek to end gender discrimination and ensure everyone has a legal identity. The UNHCR launched its “IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness” in 2014, which hoped to achieve gender equality in all nationality laws by 2024. Since the launch of the campaign, however, only three countries (Madagascar, Sierra Leone, and Liberia) have reformed their nationality laws to allow mothers to transmit citizenship equally to their children.