TILBURG LAW REVIEW Journal of International and European Law William Thomas Worster, ‘The Obligation to Grant Nationality to Stateless Children Under Treaty Law’ (2019) 24(2) Tilburg Law Review pp. 204–216. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/tilr.154 RESEARCH ARTICLE The Obligation to Grant Nationality to Stateless Children Under Treaty Law William Thomas Worster* Through a multi-layered, overlapping collection of international and regional treaties, one solution for child statelessness is emerging: the obligation of the birth state to grant nationality to otherwise stateless children. The 1961 Statelessness Convention imposes this obligation partly, but has limited adherence. The International Covenent on Civil and Political Rights provides for a right to a nationality, but does not expressly identify which state is responsible. In addition, treaties in Europe and Africa only cover the right implicitly and partially, though treaties in the Americas cover the right expressly. The interpetation of these disparate treaty obligations is now coalescing into an coherent obligation. In combination with the obligation to take all decisions in a child’s best interests under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we can now identify the birth state as the state responsible for ensuring that every child is born with a nationality. Keywords: Statelessness; De Jure; Treaty; Right to a Nationality; Best Interests 1 Introduction The statelessness of children is a particularly concerning phenomenon, yet it does have at least one partial solution, nationality of the birth state, arising from a patchwork of human rights treaties. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) is currently in the middle of an aggressive promotion of the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions,1 attempting to convince states to adhere to them. This goal is admirable and will add to the legal protection of a great number of stateless persons. In particular, it should have the result of bringing countless numbers of children into a legal bond with a state, and in the case of the 1961 Statelessness Convention, states will be obliged to grant their nationality to children born in their territory who would otherwise be stateless. Unfortunately, the Statelessness Conventions, as of yet, still have far from universal participation. This low participation means that some states do not have an obligation under the terms of the Statelessness Conventions to grant nationality to stateless children born in the state. However, there are a large number of other human rights treaties that are relevant for the legal protection of stateless persons, especially for the particular case of children who are stateless. It is through the overlapping application of these treaties, in addition to the two Statelessness Conventions, that children born otherwise stateless must receive the nationality of the state in which they are born. Statelessness touches every region in the world, with many of the largest stateless populations being composed of individuals born in a state without nationality. In Asia, Myanmar hosts almost 1 million stateless persons. Thailand has almost 500,000 people who are stateless. The central Asian nation of Uzbekistan has almost 100,000. In Africa, Côte d’Ivoire has a population of approximately 700,000 stateless persons, and in the Americas, the Dominican Republic has approximately 200,000. Europe’s stateless population is concentrated in Eastern Europe, with 250,000 stateless in Latvia and almost 100,000 stateless in both Estonia and Russia. Ukraine has a significant population of 35,000 stateless. Western Europe as well hosts * Senior Lecturer, International Law, The Hague University of Applied Sciences, The Hague, The Netherlands; Ph.D. candidate in International Law, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; LL.M. (Adv.) in Public International Law, cum laude, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands; J.D., Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, wtworster@hotmail.com 1 See Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (Sep. 28 1954) 360 UNTS 117 (1954 Statelessness Convention); Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (Aug. 30 1961) 989 UNTS 175 (1961 Statelessness Convention).