fled, could jeopardize her asylum application and, most importantly, her and her children’s safety. Without a birth certificate and a document proving that Mohammed's father is a Syrian national and Amira's husband, Mohammed is, like thousands of other child refugees, at risk of statelessness.
The vast majority of us are used to a variety of social, political and economic rights which we, as humans, consider inalienable. However, many of us ignore that these rights are guaranteed only when we’re citizens. Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "everyone has the right to a nationality", today an estimated number of 10 to 12 million people worldwide are lacking citizenship and, therefore, aren’t able to enjoy basic rights such as access to education, healthcare, housing, work or the right to vote. These people are defined as stateless persons and around 600,000 live in Europe, including thousands of children who grow up without a nationality, without belonging to any place. Children who grow up being invisible.
There are several reasons why a child can become stateless. Sometimes statelessness is passed from stateless parents to their children. In other cases, a child might be unable to acquire citizenship because of a conflict or an incompatibility between different nationality laws, or can’t prove their legal identity due to the absence of a birth certificate. Statelessness can also be a problem for some children of refugees who come from countries with discriminatory nationality laws, as in the case of Mohammed. There is also a high risk of statelessness due to the succession of States, when new countries are created and older ones cease to exist, as it happened, for example, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Lastly, other children at risk of being stateless are foundlings, internationally adopted and children born by surrogacy. There are also a number of administrative obstacles imposed by some States, which, among others, hinder the naturalization process due to discriminatory practices, whether ethnic, religious or gender-based. In all of these cases, children suffer unnecessarily.
Some countries make it impossible for stateless parents or parents who can’t prove their identity, to register the birth of their children, which is the main reason why stateless children can’t acquire an identity document or passport - a basic tool to access fundamental rights such as healthcare and education. The consequences of this situation are devastating.
The solution to the problem and the case of Spain
The only positive side of this issue is that it’s a completely solvable problem.
The conventions of the United Nations (UN) – the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness – provide a clear legal framework to define and address this issue. By establishing safeguards within national legislations governments could ensure that all children born within the territory of a country have the right to acquire a nationality if otherwise stateless.
However, despite the existence of numerous international instruments and national and regional treaties, there still remains much to be done in practice. Many States have not yet ratified the UN conventions, while others that have, fail to fulfil the established obligations. The lack of a mechanism to monitor the compliance and the lack of a common process to determine the statelessness status is complicating the protection of these people and delaying the solution at an European and global level.
In the Spanish case, the national legislation has sufficient guarantees so that a baby born on its territories can acquire Spanish nationality if otherwise stateless. But although Spain is one of the first and few countries in the world that has a specific legislative act to determine statelessness, we can still find major shortcomings and difficulties in the process. Having a regulation determining the status of stateless persons, approved by the Royal Decree 865/2001 of 20 July, unf