The refugee parents cannot pass on their nationality to their child, because: »» They are stateless (e.g. stateless Syrian Kurds, stateless Palestinians, etc.); »» The mother cannot pass on her nationality to her child due to sex discrimination in the country of origin (she is Syrian, Lebanese, Somalian, Sudanese or Iranian, for example) and the father is stateless or unknown; Scenario 1 »» Scenario 2 Under the law of the country of origin, the acquisition of nationality at birth in case of children born to nationals abroad is not automatic, in order for the child to acquire the nationality of her/his parents, she/he first needs to be registered with the authorities of the country of origin, which is impossible in the case of refugees.1 The refugee parents (or the refugee father in case of sex discrimination in the nationality law of the country of origin) pass on their nationality to their child ipso facto. Under the law of the country of origin, the child becomes a national as a matter of legal automatism, this not being conditioned on registration with consular authorities. The child is born stateless.2 The child, in principle, acquires a nationality at birth. 1. This is atypical though among the main relevant countries of origin of refugees in the EU context. 2. Cf. 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, 21 December 2012, Para. 27, http://www.refworld.org/docid/50d460c72.html Under the first scenario, the legal situation is clear: these children do not acquire their parents’ nationality and will therefore fall under the scope of the legal safeguards for ‘otherwise stateless’ children. In these cases, problems may arise from: »» Improper, or improperly applied legal safeguards for ‘otherwise stateless’ children; »» The lack of a proper statelessness determination mechanism in the Member State, which will leave the parents’ statelessness unidentified (and therefore the competent authorities may not see the need to activate the safeguards for the ‘otherwise stateless’ child); »» The lack of awareness about the wide-spread discrimination against women that exists in nationality laws, especially in the Middle-East and parts of Africa. Authorities responsible for civil registration may not have the necessary knowledge about the exact rules applicable in all relevant countries of origins, and may wrongly attribute the mother’s nationality to a refugee child without checking whether this is actually possible under the law of the country of origin. At the same time, most refugee children in the EU fall under the second scenario, which – legally speaking – is the more challenging one, posing a number of serious dilemmas and practical difficulties, which are far from being settled (or even properly addressed) in international doctrine, jurisprudence or literature. The majority of refugee children born in the EU will, in principle, acquire the nationality of their parents at birth. However, as they are not able to register with the authorities of the country of origin, they do not obtain any proof or official recognition of their ipso facto acquired nationality, at least for some time. Should there be a realistic prospect of voluntary return in the near future, this may only be a temporary gap, as the child’s nationality can be registered back in the country of origin before she/he reaches school age, for instance. But the conflicts that are behind the majority of refugee arrivals in Europe – such as those of Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq or Somalia – are extremely protracted, similarly to the endurance of certain dictatorial regimes that force many to flee towards the EU. The impossibility to register the refugee child’s nationality and obtain documentary proof thereof for many years or even decades, may result in the child’s nationality being reduced to a mere legal fiction, which has little in common with how the International Court of Justice defined nationality (‘a legal bond having as its basis a social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties’).55 A 12-year-old Somali refugee child living in Europe, who has never been to Somalia, and has neither a chance to be registered as a Somali national by the competent Somali authority, nor she/he has a realistic prospective to ever return there to live, hardly has any social attachment or a genuine connection of existence, with reciprocal rights, with her parents’ once homeland. Depending on the host country’s practices, such a refugee child may also be registered and remain – in the perception of the host country – a person of undetermined, unknown or unclear nationality. In case of protracted refugee situations, the child has no realistic perspective of clarifying her/his nationality status with the authorities of the country of origin; therefore, she/he will remain of unknown nationality for several years or decades in 55 Nottebohm case (Liechtenstein v. Guatemala) (1955) ICJ. 11