Report on Citizenship Law: Ethiopia was to show that the king was superior and had many rights and the people were just subjects of his reign. This attitude is reflected in the preamble to the constitution.11 By stating that “any person born in Ethiopia or abroad, whose father or mother is Ethiopian, is an Ethiopian subject,”12 Article 1 of the 1930 Ethiopian nationality law established that nationality was based on descent, by ius sanguinis. At first sight the law appears to be gender neutral. However, later articles undermine this. The law gives guidelines to determine the nationality of children born from a marriage between Ethiopians and foreigners. The rule is that a child born from a lawful mixed marriage follows the nationality of the father. A child born outside a lawful marriage with an Ethiopian father and a foreign mother, if requested to, has to prove that the child does not have the original nationality of the mother. When the father is a foreigner and the mother is Ethiopian, the child is allowed to maintain the Ethiopian nationality of the mother as long as he/she lives in Ethiopia and can prove he/she has divested him/herself of the paternal nationality.13 The law also stipulated rules on the nationality of children legitimised by a lawful marriage between Ethiopians and foreigners. If the lawful marriage according to the national law of the foreign father is posterior to the birth of the child issued from his relations with an Ethiopian woman, the child legitimated through this subsequent marriage follows the nationality of his foreign father only on condition that the national law of the latter confers upon him the foreign nationality with all inhering rights. Otherwise the child preserves his Ethiopian nationality.14 The legitimation, without subsequent lawful marriage between the foreign father and the Ethiopian mother, of the child issued from the relation outside marriage deprives the child of his Ethiopian nationality only if the legitimation, made in accordance with the forms of law of the foreign father, confers upon the child thus legitimated the nationality of his father with all inhering rights.15 Article 2 of the law reads that “a lawful marriage of an Ethiopian subject with a foreign woman confers the Ethiopian nationality upon her.” An a contrario reading of this tells us that the law did not allow a foreigner married to an Ethiopian woman to automatically obtain Ethiopian nationality. In the subsequent articles, this nationality law laid down rules on the ways of acquiring and losing nationality rights. Articles 2-5 stipulated rules on nationality in the case of marriage between an Ethiopian subject and a foreign national. They provided that Ethiopian subjects that legally marry women of foreign nationality can confer Ethiopian nationality on them.16 However, if an Ethiopian woman married a foreign man, she could be deprived of her Ethiopian nationality if her marriage with the foreigner conferred the nationality of her husband 11 For example, Article 6 of the 1931 constitution states that “In the Ethiopian Empire supreme power rests in the hands of the Emperor.” Moreover, the preamble to the 1955 constitution states that “We granted to Our faithful subjects and proclaimed a Constitution for the Empire of Ethiopia.” 12 Article 1 of the 1930 Ethiopian Nationality law. 13 Article 7. 14 Article 8. 15 Article 9. 16 It shall be considered a lawful marriage where the Ethiopian Subject marries with religious or customary civil marriage practiced in Ethiopia and the marriage takes place in Ethiopia, or an Ethiopian subject marries a foreign woman in a foreign country according to the foreign country marriage practice. See article 3(a &b) of the 1930 Nationality Proclamation. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/9 - © 2020 Author(s) 5