(ARABIC) On International Human Rights Day UN Agencies and Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights Urge Action to Uphold Gender Equal Nationality Rights across the Middle East-North Africa Region

As the world marks Human Rights Day 2022 and the final day of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) join the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights in calling for urgent, much needed reforms to uphold gender-equal nationality rights without delay in MENA and elsewhere. 

Citizens’ equal right to pass their nationality to their children is a fundamental human right, one that is essential to advancing gender equality, children’s rights and wellbeing, and sustainable development, and to preventing statelessness. While women were historically denied the right to confer nationality, over the past several decades most nationality laws have been reformed to enable women and men to confer nationality on an equal basis. Yet today 24 countries globally maintain nationality laws that limit or prevent women from conferring nationality on their children on an equal basis as men, with twelve of these twenty-four countries in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region. Almost fifty countries prevent women from conferring nationality on their spouse on an equal basis as men. 

Click to read the full statement in Arabic. The English version may be viewed here.