Worldwide, at least 25 countries continue to discriminate against women in their right to transmit nationality to their children, putting their children at increased risk of statelessness and all of the hardships that entails. Elsewhere, citizenship laws discriminate against men in much the same respect — where children born outside of wedlock cannot inherit their father’s nationality. On 19 April 2012, the Statelessness Programme of Tilburg University brought together selected experts for a roundtable discussion of how gendered citizenship laws are in the 21st century and the impact that this is having on families across the world. The debate also considers what processes have enabled reform in countries that have recently introduced gender equality in the enjoyment of citizenship rights and what more needs to be done to encourage other governments to follow suit.

The debate is led byMr Sebastian Köhn, Programme Coordinator for the Equality and Citizenship Programme of the Open Society Justice Initiative in New York. The expert panelists each have a unique insight into the nexus between gender and citizenship:Prof. Cees Flinterman shares his experiences from serving for 8 years on the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women;Prof. René de Groot talks about trends in nationality laws in Europe and around the world; andMs Radha Govil (UNHCR Geneva) discusses the work that is currently being done by the UN refugee agency to tackle the last remaining pockets of gender discrimination in nationality legislation.

The Statelessness Programme is an initiative of Tilburg Law School, dedicated to research, training and outreach on statelessness and related issues. More information on the work of the Statelessness Programme can be found at www.tilburguniversity.edu/statelessness.

More background about gender discrimination in nationality laws can be found on UNHCR’s website here:

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