Nationality and Cases of Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa female national will often have to meet the regular naturalisation conditions regardless of this familial connection to the state. The other two circumstances in which some MENA countries facilitate naturalisation is for individuals who were born on state territory and for people who are themselves Arab or who come from an Arab country. Wherever a stateless person falls into one of these categories, he or she will be able to benefit from the facilitated procedure, which can improve the chances of successfully acquiring nationality. Importantly, international law calls on states to facilitate the naturalisation of stateless persons as an independent category. This serves the common interest of ensuring that everyone enjoys the right to a nationality as set out in a multitude of human rights instruments at UN and regional level. Such a provision can explicitly be found in article 32 of the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, to which Algeria, Libya and Tunisia are all state parties. Yet, not a single nationality law in the MENA region recognises this principle and stateless people are subject to the same naturalisation conditions and procedures as anyone else seeking to acquire nationality. Only in Yemen is there the possibility that a more loosely-formulated article may be invoked to the benefit of stateless people: article 6 of the Yemen Nationality Law allows for a reduction of the qualifying 104

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