United Nations Legal Identity Agenda

Commitments on identifications and identity documents

The first multilateral international treaty on nationality, adopted in 1930, aimed at establishing common rules to ensure that every person had a nationality, and just one nationality—while leaving states a large degree of sovereign discretion in determining who were their nationals.1 The international human rights regime established since the second World War presumes that states should respect and protect the rights of all those within their territories, whether nationals or not, and guarantees most rights to ‘everyone’. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also provides that “Everyone has the right to a nationality” and the framework of international treaties has since elaborated on that right, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which every UN member state except the USA is a party, and the conventions prohibiting discrimination (June 2016, Bronwen Manby). A range of international and regional human rights establish the right of every person to recognition as a person before the law, meant to ensure legal status and capacity to exercise rights and enter into contractual obligations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) Article 6 states that “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”, regardless of whether they are citizens or immigrants, students or tourists, workers or refugees, or any other group. Article 16 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) also states right to recognition before the law. The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families adopted by General Assembly in 1990 stated in Article 24 that ‘Every migrant worker and every member of his or her family shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law’. Recognition of children is mentioned in Article 8. The Convention on the Rights of the Child requires states to respect the right of the child “to preserve his or her identity (including nationality, name and family relations)” and, “where a child is illegally deprived of some or

“Where a child is illegally deprived of some or all of the elements of his or her identity, States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to re-establishing speedily his or her identity.”--UNCRC, Article 8

1 The Hague Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of Nationality Laws, 1930.

all of the elements of his or her identity, to provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to re-establishing speedily his or her identity.” The 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness requires states to grant nationality to a person in some circumstances, notably, to a child born in the territory of that state where the child would otherwise be stateless and to a child found in the territory of unknown parents, and also places limits on the deprivation of nationality.2 Convention on the ‘Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women’ that was instituted in 1981 by UN and ratified by India in 1993 defines discrimination against women as "...any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field.3 The UN Human Rights Council has repeatedly affirmed that arbitrary deprivation of nationality is a violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms because persons without nationality may have difficulty accessing basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement and hence States shall introduce safeguards to prevent statelessness by granting their nationality to persons who would otherwise be stateless.4

Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) provides that “[e]very one has the right to a nationality” and that “[n]o one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.” Enshrining citizenship and the right to be free from arbitrary deprivation of citizenship as human rights in and of themselves, article 15 of the UDHR establishes the bedrock legal relationship between individuals and states. While all states are bound to respect the human rights of all individuals without distinction, an individual's legal bond to a particular state through citizenship remains in practice an essential prerequisite to the enjoyment and protection of the full range of human rights.5

United Nations Legal Identity Agenda6

As per the UN operational agenda, Legal identity is defined as the basic characteristics of an individual's identity. e.g., name, sex, place and date of birth conferred through registration and the issuance of a certificate by an authorized civil registration authority following the

2 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, 1961 3 The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); webhttps://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw.htm 4 http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/Nationality.aspx. 5 Mirna Adjami, Julia Harrington; 18 September 2008; Refugee Survey Quarterly, Volume 27, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 93–109, 6 https://unstats.un.org/legal-identity-agenda/