ISI Database on Statelessness and
Human Rights

47. (...) the Committee is concerned that asylum-seeking and refugee women and girls remain in a vulnerable and marginalized situation, in particular with regard to conferring nationality and statelessness at birth. (...)

48. The Committee urges the State party to ensure protection for asylum-seeking and refugee women and their children in line with international standards. It recommends that the State party consider accession to international instruments to address the situation of stateless persons, namely the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

59. The Committee requests the State party to expedite the adoption of the draft bill amending article 6 of the Nationality Code and to continue harmonizing its Nationality Code with article 9 of the Convention. It also recommends that the State party withdraw its reservation concerning article 9, paragraph 2.

52. The Committee recommends that the State party increase its efforts to ensure access of all children to free birth registration, and that it take steps to identify all children who have not been registered or obtained an identity document. The Committee also encourages the State party to adopt flexible measures of birth registration, including mobile units to reach all children. The Committee further recommends that the State party implement a specific birth registration strategy for indigenous peoples based on respect for their culture and taking into account the Committee’s general comment No. 11 (2009) on indigenous children and their rights under the Convention.

38. The Committee recommends that, with a view to improving birth registration rates, the State party:

(a) Ensure that birth registration is free and compulsory in practice;

(b) Establish birth registration facilities, including mobile birth registration units, at the local, community and village levels;

(c) Conduct awareness-raising campaigns, with the active support of community leaders, to promote birth registration; and

(d) Provide information, in its next periodic report, on the implementation and impact of its plan to improve birth registration rates.

71. (...) (c) Consider ratifying the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

33. The Committee recommends the State party to:

(a) Continue and strengthen its efforts to ensure that all children are registered at birth; including through the development of mobile registration units, by paying particular attention to Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian refugee children;

(b) Undertake a survey to identify children lacking birth registration and/or identity documentation, and take immediate administrative and judicial measures to ensure retroactive birth registration and issuance of documents for these children; and

(c) Take immediate measures to ensure that children lacking identity documents are not refused access to education, heath, and public services, including child allowance.

61. (...) In addition the Committee is concerned at the high number of refugee children within the State party who are at risk of statelessness due to the lack of birth and citizenship certificates, which limits their access to basic services.

62. The Committee recommends that the State party establish a clear legal framework, including by reviewing the Law on Asylum governing the treatment of asylum-seeking children and to strengthen the implementation of the Action Plan in order to ensure that all children, are fully registered and effectively benefit from the social protection system.

45. The Committee recommends that the State party:

(a) Approve without delay the new Civil Registry Law and assign the resources needed for its application so as to enable modernisation of the current registry apparatus at both the municipal and central levels;

(b) Prioritize training of civil registrars and health and education officials to rapidly close the gap, particularly in the Caribbean Coast autonomous regions (RAAN and RAAS); and

(c) Conduct communication programmes and campaigns to massively disseminate the contents of the new law and encourage birth registration as a routine practice.

37. The Committee calls upon the State party to take all the necessary measures to ensure that children from the most disadvantaged groups are properly registered at birth and to provide information on the outcome of the ongoing Universal Registration Programme in its next periodic report. The Committee also encourages the State party to intensify its efforts in public education to raise awareness and disseminate information on the importance of birth registration, especially among disadvantaged communities.

35. The Committee recommends that the State party take all necessary measures to ensure that all children are registered at birth. In particular, the State party should ensure the provision of adequate human and financial resources for entities that are responsible for this task. The Committee also urges the State party to make sure that guarantees exist to ensure retroactive registration of children above the age of five who have not yet been registered and that registration is carried out by services which are easily accessible by parents.

64. (...) The Committee further recommends that the State party make sure that all children in Angola, including Angolan children born abroad, are registered and have full access to institutions and services.

38. The Committee recommends that the State party:

(a) Continue to take all necessary measures, including retroactively, to ensure access of all children to free birth registration as early as possible and take steps to identify those children who have not been registered or obtained an identity document;

(b) Create institutional structures that are accessible and free, for example, by introducing mobile units, especially in rural and remote areas and for internally displaced persons and refugee camps;

(c) Enhance families’ awareness of the importance of registering the birth of their children, as a way to access fulfilment of their rights and

(d) Seek technical assistance from UNICEF, among others, for the implementation of these recommendations.

15. (...) The Committee reiterates its previous recommendation calling on the State party to enhance efforts to reduce the number of persons with undetermined citizenship. The Committee calls on the State party to examine further the reasons behind the reluctance of potential applicants to engage in the naturalization process with a view to improving the situation. The Committee also reiterates its invitation to the State party to ratify the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.