the State of origin).61 In this assessment, states should make sure that: »» The best interest of the child is given a primary consideration, including the primacy of the child’s right to safe and healthy development;62 »» Nationality is not understood as a purely legal-technical link, but as a key aspect of one’s social identity (with a major impact on one’s ability to enjoy her/his right to private life), in light of the consequent jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the definition of nationality provided by the International Court of Justice in the Nottebohm case;63 »» The determination of the refugee child’s nationality will be conducted with due diligence and in a reasonable time frame, leaving the child with an unknown or ‘under determination’ nationality for as little time as possible (UNHCR recommends, evoking the 1961 Convention, that this process should never exceed 5 years);64 »» The authority in charge of this determination process has the relevant expertise, information, capacity and resources for carrying out this task to a high professional quality; »» Each case is examined in an individualised manner, considering a number of factors, such as: ── The endurance of the circumstances that forced the parents to leave their country of origin and any prospective of return in the foreseeable future; ── The time the parents already spent in the host country; ── The parents’ will; ── The state or non-state character of the agent behind the persecution that forced the parents to leave their home (i.e. in case of a clearly non-state agent of persecution there may be some opportunities to register the child’s birth with the consular authorities of the country of origin without exposing the family to a risk of persecution or losing their status, but this possibility should be examined in an extremely careful manner and only on an exceptional basis); ── Whether or not the two States in question allow for multiple nationality; ── State failure in the country of origin; ── Experiences with similar cases (what happened with refugee families from the same country of origin in a comparable situation); etc. For instance, the child of two refugee parents who fled from political persecution from a failed state with unresolved armed conflicts for decades, and who have been settled in the host country for several years with no intention and any foreseeable possibility of voluntary return, the child’s ipso facto ‘inherited’ nationality may easily be reduced to a legal fiction of which no official evidence can ever be obtained, rather than ‘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’.65 In such a situation, it is likely to be in the child’s best interest – and thus serve her/his safe and healthy development – to be identified as ‘otherwise stateless’ (not considered as a national by the parents country of origin under the operation of its law66) and thus acquire the nationality of the host country soon after birth, following a careful assessment of her/his individual case. In such cases, the line of arguments applicable in the first (previous) scenario can be invoked in support. While the EU Charter may impose different obligations depending on the two presented scenarios, it can, in any case, significantly support efforts to prevent statelessness among refugee children and the violation of their right to private life, as well as to ensure the primary consideration of their best interest in connection with this long-overlooked issue. 61 62 63 64 65 66 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. 28, http://www.refworld. org/docid/50d460c72.html See Section I of this paper. See detailed references earlier in this paper. 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. 22, http://www.refworld. org/docid/50d460c72.html Cf. the previously cited definition of nationality provided by the International Court of Justice in the Nottebohm case. See what has been said about the ‘stateless person’ definition of the 1954 Convention in Section IV of this paper. With financial support from the Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme of the European Union 14