SOLVING STATELESSNESS withheld, halting their progress to higher education and limiting their job prospects. Stateless children also frequently find themselves ineligible for scholarships or student loans.39 Goals such as SDG 4 are important in that they protect stateless people and ensure that they, like others, have access to basic rights.40 Improving the enjoyment of basic rights and the living conditions of stateless persons through such SDGs may also help with the integration of stateless (and formerly stateless) populations, particularly large in situ groups, which may in the longer term facilitate initiatives aimed at resolving their statelessness and preventing new cases from occurring.41 However, a more direct solution to statelessness requires the resolution of existing cases of statelessness and preventing new cases from occurring. In this regard, SDGs 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls), 10 (Reduce inequality within and among countries), and 16 (Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels), and their related Targets are particularly relevant. SDG 5, Target 5.1 (End all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere) is applicable to the issue of gender discrimination in nationality laws, which is a major cause of statelessness. The nationality laws of 27 countries, in almost all regions of the world, prevent mothers from conferring their nationality on their children on an equal basis with fathers.42 In these countries, when fathers are missing, dead, have abandoned the family or are unwilling to take the necessary steps to transmit their nationality, children can be left stateless. In more than 50 countries, nationality laws do not afford women the same rights to acquire, change or retain their nationality as men. This can lead to statelessness where nationality laws make women’s nationality status contingent on that of their husbands, or prevent (stateless) men from acquiring the nationality of their wives.43 39 40 41 42 43 See, Georgetown University Human-Rights Institute Fact-Finding Project, supra n25, pp. 9-11. See, UNHCR, supra n35. With thanks to Nicholas Oakeshott, UNHCR’s Regional Protection Officer (Statelessness) for the Asia Pacific and Inge Sturkenboom, UNHCR’s Regional Protection Officer (Statelessness) for Europe for highlighting this point. See, UNHCR, supra n35. UNHCR, Background Note on Gender Equality, Nationality Laws and Statelessness 2016, 2016. Equality Now, The State We’re In: Ending Sexism in Nationality Laws, 2016. 55