CHAPTER I CHAPTER II I. INTRODUCTION AND DEFINITIONS All children should be able to play, learn and grow up in safety. They should have a legal identity and nationality, and they should be able to access all the rights to which they are entitled under international law. In today’s world, fulfilment of the right to a nationality is vital for children, because lack of nationality can affect almost every aspect of a child’s life in devastating ways. Statelessness often means that children are more likely to grow up in poverty and instability. It results in restrictions on access to education, health care, decent housing and other essentials. It can contribute to family separation and heightened risks of trafficking, exploitation and other abuse. It often prevents travel and other opportunities and, in some cases, statelessness results in children being treated like criminals — arbitrarily arrested and detained. The words of Jirair, a young stateless person, express the despair of many others: “The doors of the world are closed to me.” 1 But we can open doors by ensuring that all children can access their right to a nationality. Sometimes there is a relatively simple remedy to help prevent or reduce childhood statelessness, such as abolishing administrative fees for birth registration or the acquisition of citizenship, or doing outreach to help register eligible stateless children as citizens. These remedies can make it much more likely that marginalized children acquire citizenship and can subsequently access other basic rights. Sometimes legislative changes, collaboration between various government and other agencies, free legal assistance, awareness-raising campaigns and other measures are also needed. Nationality laws can and should protect children from being stateless. Best practice is to grant the nationality of the country of birth to all children born on the territory (birthright 1 See I Am Here, I Belong: The urgent need to end childhood statelessness. UNHCR, 2015. 1