INTERNATIONAL: U.S. Works for Reform of Nationality Laws that Hurt Women

The United States is working for reform of nationality laws that hurt women, says Maria Otero, the State Department's under secretary for democracy and global affairs.

Nationality laws discriminate against women in at least 30 countries, Otero said at a Refugees International event October 25 at the U.S. Institute of Peace. These laws, she said, limit women's ability to acquire, retain and transmit citizenship to their children.

“In many cases, nationality laws permit only the father to transmit citizenship to his child,” Otero said. “And in still other cases, nationality laws strip women of their citizenship upon marriage to a foreign spouse, or prohibit women's foreign spouses from naturalization.”

The result is that hundreds of thousands of women are left without legal protection or a social safety net, she said.
“Stateless persons typically lack identity documentation and cannot register births, marriages or deaths. They often cannot work legally or travel freely. They cannot vote, open a bank account, or own property and they often lack access to health care and other public services,” Otero said.

Lack of citizenship contributes to cycles of poverty and vulnerability, Otero said. Without a birth registration or a citizenship document, children are barred from attending school. They may fall victim to abuse and exploitation, including gender-based violence, trafficking in persons and arbitrary arrest and detention.
Otero acknowledged that there is little research on the issue of statelessness and even less on gender discrimination in nationality laws.

To try to understand the impact of statelessness better, the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration recently funded a study by Kingston University in the United Kingdom to examine its costs. The study used quantitative and qualitative methods to compare the livelihoods of stateless persons with those of citizens in four countries. Among its most striking findings was that statelessness reduces household income by a third and reduces the odds of owning one's home by nearly 60 percent. The average education level of members of stateless households is lower than that of citizens by at least one year and in some cases as many as six years. The study also demonstrated disadvantages for stateless people in terms of health status and access to justice and law enforcement.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has identified statelessness and women's nationality rights as important areas of work for the State Department. Under her leadership, U.S. diplomats around the world are working to generate local political will to reform discriminatory nationality laws, Otero said.
“We want to persuade government officials to amend nationality laws that discriminate against women,” Otero said. “We want to ensure universal birth registration, and we want to establish procedures and systems that help stateless people acquire citizenship.”
“Statelessness,” Otero said, “is not just a humanitarian or human rights issue — it is a matter of human security and the protection of individuals.”