Previous UPR of Croatia under the First and Second Cycle 6. Croatia was previously reviewed during the 9th and 22nd sessions of the UPR, in 2010 and 2015 respectively. During the first cycle, Croatia received six recommendations, including one by Hungary to accede to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (accepted) and five on citizenship of persons of non-Croat ethnic origin, including Roma, by Ecuador, Finland (two recommendations), Poland and the Republic of Korea (four accepted, one noted). During the second cycle, Croatia received and accepted one recommendation by Switzerland to: “Protect the rights of minorities, in particular by providing access to basic services for the Roma minority, including the ability for stateless Roma to obtain Croatian nationality, in accordance with its human rights obligations”. Croatia’s International obligations 7. Croatia acceded to the 1954 Convention on the Status of Stateless Persons as part of the former Yugoslavia in 1959 and acceded to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness in 2011, in line with the recommendation made by Hungary during the 9th UPR session. Croatia has further international obligations to protect the right to a nationality and protect the rights of stateless persons on the basis of international and regional treaties to which it is a party. These include, among others the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR - article 24.3), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR - articles. 2.2 and article 3), the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC - articles 2, 3, 7 and 8), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW - article 9), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD - article 5(d)(iii)), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD - article 18), and the International Convention for the Protection of All persons from Enforced Disappearance (CED - article 25). In 2005, Croatia signed, but has not yet acceded to, the 1997 European Convention on Nationality. Furthermore, the right to a nationality is protected under Article 15 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. 8. In its 2015 review of Croatia, the Human Rights Committee stated its concern about: “the number of stateless persons, mainly Roma, under the State party’s jurisdiction who face difficulties in meeting the requirements for obtaining Croatian citizenship because they often lack personal identity documents”, especially in connection to the break-up of Yugoslavia. The Committee therefore recommended that Croatia: “should take all the measures necessary to ensure full enjoyment of Covenant rights by all residents, including stateless persons. It should establish and implement effective measures to address statelessness and regularise the status of the Roma, including by facilitating access to identification documentation”.4 3 Human Rights Committee (CCPR/HRC), Concluding observations on the third periodic report of Croatia, CCPR/C/HRV/CO/3, paras 8 and 9. 2