Comment on the Zhao Case realities of living in the employer’s home, or being undocumented after leaving it, coupled with prevalent racism, language barriers, fear of reprisal and unfair power differentials, mean that migrant domestic workers are rarely well-positioned to take up claims against the state. This is a space where the right to nationality at birth must be emphasised through future advocacy. Finally, even beyond the MENA context, identifying statelessness is often accompanied by the risk of entrenching the status without providing protected status for stateless people. Thus, ‘stateless’ could become just another term for Bidoon or ‘undetermined/unknown nationality’, rather than a pathway to rights.29 B Opportunities for Strategic Advocacy and Litigation Despite the absence of large-scale mapping studies in the MENA, research on statelessness in the region is growing. The International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University, the American University of Beirut and other partners have launched a platform for statelessness research and advocacy in the MENA that hosts country-specific reports.30 The Global Citizenship Observatory (GLOBALCIT), which works on citizenship laws and policy around the world, has recently added reports by country experts on a number of MENA states. 31 One MENA state with potential for strategic application of the Zhao case is Tunisia, which has acceded to the Refugee and Statelessness Conventions and boasts a favourable nationality regime.32 Its court system has set the regional standard for independence and progressive engagement. These factors, coupled with an active civil society, may allow stateless persons and advocates to exert additional pressure for legislative and institutional reform through strategic engagement in the UN system.33 Like in the Netherlands, Tunisia’s existing obligations under the Statelessness Conventions have never been transposed into its national laws. Tunisia claims to have effective statelessness safeguards in 29 30 31 32 33 This risk has been observed across contexts where strategic litigation has been used to legally ‘solve’ statelessness. See, eg, Bingham and Gamboa (n 12) 155–58. The platform can be found at: MENA Statelessness Platform (Website) <www.statelessmena.com>. So far, country studies have been completed on Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. The reports focus on the history of citizenship in each country, modes of acquisition and loss and current debates and reform plans regarding citizenship policy. Individual country profiles have, so far, been published for Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco and Syria: see ‘Country Profiles’, Global Citizenship Observatory (Web Page) <https://globalcit.eu/country-profiles/>. Tunisia has been party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, opened for signature 28 July 1951, 189 UNTS 137 (entered into force 22 April 1954) since 1957, and its 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, opened for signature 31 January 1967, 606 UNTS 267 (entered into force 4 October 1967) since 1968; the 1954 Convention (n 16) since 1969; the 1961 Convention (n 11) since 2000; and the 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, opened for signature 10 September 1969, 1001 UNTS 45 (entered into force 20 June 1974) since 1989. In Zhao, the HRC implies that accession to the 1961 Convention is a condition precedent to finding a violation of art 24(3) in these circumstances but it does not explicitly state this. Coincidentally, Yadh Ben Achour, a Tunisian member of the HRC, authored a concurring opinion in Zhao arguing that the Netherlands’ actions in withholding protected status amounted to a violation of the right of recognition as a person before the law, under art 16 of the ICCPR: Zhao v the Netherlands (n 1) annex I, 10. This presents an additional legal theory that advocates can explore in pursuing the right to nationality through the HRC. 151