REFUGEES FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION UNHCR, APRIL 2023 including in Guinea Bissau, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, and for Burundian refugees resident in Tanzania since the 1970s.145 Children of refugees born in the territory of the country of asylum The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that every child shall have the right to acquire a nationality (Article 7). This right is also contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Familties, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) prohibits discrimination based on sex in the transmission of nationality to children (and spouses); while the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) also contains provisions that restrict discrimination on racial or ethnic grounds in grant of nationality.146 Within the African human rights system, Article 6(4) of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child requires states to provide in law that : A child shall acquire the nationality of the State in the territory of which he [sic] has been born if, at the time of the child’s birth, he is not granted nationality by any other State in accordance with its laws. This protection is long-established in international law, dating back to The Hague convention on nationality of 1930. 147 A similar provision is included in Article 1 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness in relation to a child born in the territory who is otherwise stateless. The 1961 Convention provides that a child may be required to fulfil a period of up to five years’ habitual residence in the territory of the state of birth in order to acquire that state’s nationality. 148 Protections in international law for the right to nationality for children of unknown parents found on the territory, known as “foundlings”, are also amongst the longest standing requirements of international law on nationality.149 UNHCR recommends that provisions on foundlings should “apply to all young children who are not yet able to communicate accurately information pertaining to the identity of their parents or their place of birth.”150 The presumption that such a child acquires the nationality of the state where he or she is fuond applies equally to children believed to belong to a refugee community, but whose parents are not known. The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness also provides that a state shall grant nationality to a child born outside its territory to parents who are nationals, if the child would otherwise be stateless 145 Bronwen Manby, ‘Naturalisation in African States: Its Past and Potential Future’, Citizenship Studies 25, no. 4 (2021): 514–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2021.1926098; for Tanzania, see the discussion in Manby, ‘Citizenship and Statelessness in the East African Community’. 146 On the interpretation of the provisions in CERD, see Michelle Foster and Timnah Rachel Baker, ‘Racial Discrimination in Nationality Laws’, Columbia Journal of Race and Law 11, no. 1 (2021): 83 –146, https://doi.org/10.7916/CJRL.V11I1.8018; as well as UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), ‘General Recommendation XXX: Discrimination against Non-Citizens’ (Geneva: United Nations, 5 August 2004), https://www.refworld.org/docid/45139e084.html. 147 The Hague Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, 1930, Arti cle 15. 148 UNHCR, ‘Guidelines on Statelessness No. 4: Ensuring Every Child’s Right to Acquire a Nationality through Articles 1-4 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness’ (Geneva: United Nations, December 2012), para. 40, https://www.refworld.org/docid/50d460c72.html. 149 The Hague Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, 1930, Article 14. 150 UNHCR, ‘Guidelines on Statelessness No. 4’, para. 58. 52