ENSURING THE RIGHT TO A NATIONALITY FOR CHILDREN IN MIGRATION IN EUROPE 1 3 INTRODUCTION A stateless person is somebody who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law (so both in law and practice).1 Having a nationality facilitates access to many fundamental human rights. Consequently, not having a nationality can make it difficult for children to access rights, such as healthcare, education, birth registration, social welfare and housing, and independence and livelihood opportunities as they progress towards adulthood.2 Stateless children may also be at particular risk of immigration detention.3 It is harder to protect children from trafficking, child labour, exploitation, early marriage and other types of abuse if they are stateless and lack identity documents, and their statelessness may even put them at greater risk of abuse.4 Despite obligations under international and regional law for all States to fulfil every child’s right to acquire a nationality and have their best interests taken as a primary consideration, only half of European states have full legal safeguards in place to prevent children, who would otherwise be stateless, from growing up without a nationality. 5 A birth certificate is essential evidence of a child’s family ties and place of birth, and therefore helps secure their acquisition of a nationality. However, children in migration can face barriers to the registration and documentation of their births (as can other groups in Europe, including Romani people and other minority groups).6 Children born en route to Europe face challenges in registering their birth and acquiring a nationality.7 Lack of awareness about statelessness among refugees and migrants, as well as those assisting them and decisionmakers, creates a risk of statelessness being overlooked and inadequately addressed, which can expose stateless children to immigration detention and other violations of their fundamental rights. A lack of standardised, child rightsbased procedures to identify and protect stateless people also increases the risk of statelessness among children in migration. This paper provides an overview of how statelessness affects children in migration in Europe and explains what more needs to be done to prevent and reduce childhood statelessness in the migration context. It begins with a summary of the international and regional legal framework on the child’s right to a nationality, then provides examples of children at risk of statelessness and why they are in this situation, before explaining current protection gaps. It proposes key actions to address and prevent statelessness and ensure that all children in Europe have their right to a nationality fulfilled, including children in migration.