The United Nations 1954 Statelessness Convention defines a stateless person as someone who is not considered a national by any State under the operation of its law. Although statelessness is not a recent phenomenon and stateless individuals have existed for centuries due to post-war migration, territorial changes, state succession, or forced displacement following natural disasters, modern nationality laws can also render certain individuals stateless. This may occur due to the exclusion of certain groups from the body of citizens by states that discriminate based on race, religion, ethnicity, or gender in their nationality laws. Gender-discriminatory nationality laws present such a problem of statelessness, where some individuals can be prevented from acquiring nationality and the legal benefits associated with it. It is one of the leading causes of statelessness worldwide, yet very few scholars, researchers, and human rights organisations have paid it considerable attention.
Nationality laws discriminate based on gender when they entail unequal nationality rights for men and women in terms of conferring nationality to their children or non-national spouses. Such laws are based on the principle of ‘paternal jus sanguinis’, where nationality is acquired through paternal descent, implying that only fathers are entitled to pass their nationality to their children. The patriarchal nature of these laws discriminates against women by restricting the ability of mothers to pass on their nationality to their children. Although gender-discriminatory nationality laws are prevalent in different regions of the world, the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region has the largest number of states with such laws. There are at least twelve countries in the region that discriminate against mothers in their ability to confer nationality on their children, including the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—along with Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Sudan, and Syria.
Origin of these Laws
Although it is difficult to enumerate the exact reasons responsible for the origin of gender-discriminatory nationality laws in Middle Eastern countries, certain social, historical, and economic factors can be acknowledged which potentially led to the adoption of ‘paternal jus sanguinis laws’ in the region:
Patrilineal Society: Through their ethnographic, historical, and sociological analyses, renowned scholars such as Halim Barakat, Raphael Patai, and M. Kamel Nahas identified patrilineality as a significant feature of traditional Arab societies. In pre-modern Arab societies, tribal families were organised on the principle of patrilineal descent, in which tribal membership was given to people who shared common male ancestors. Children’s social and biological identities were determined by their father’s name and male lineage. Although forces of globalisation and modernisation transformed state structures in the Middle East, the traditional system of patrilineal descent remained influential and was similarly incorporated into the legal system to determine nationality in modern nation-states.
Colonial Influence: After World War I, several Middle Eastern states were placed under British and French mandates by the League of Nations. Both French and British laws significantly influenced their nationality codes. However, French legal influence was more profound, as many Arab jurists studied law and obtained degrees from France in the twentieth century. Therefore, the French Civil Code (1804) became their major source of reference, under which French nationality was conferred on children from their father. Consequently, many postcolonial Middle Eastern states adopted similar provisions of nationality conferral in their constitutions.
Oil Rentierism: The discovery of oil, notably in the six GCC states, has driven substantial economic growth through oil exports. In the 1970s, these countries came to be known as “rentier states” in the Rentier State Theory (RST) developed by economists Hossein Mahdavy and Hazem El Beblawi, as they rely heavily on external income (oil rents) generated by oil sales. Their wealth is utilised to disburse various socioeconomic benefits to their citizens, such as free health care, public employment, education, water, electricity, and subsidised housing. By maintaining a strict nationality regime of descent-based citizenship, these states ensure that these benefits are transferred to their limited population of citizens without straining the states’ financial capacity.
Major Implications of Gender-Discriminatory Nationality Laws
When nationality is a patrilineal right conferred by the father, fathers’ inability to confer it can lead to childhood statelessness under various circumstances. For instance, if the child is born to a stateless, unknown, or non-national father in countries where nationality is a patrilineal right, inherited naturally from a citizen father, the child risks becoming stateless. Even if the mother holds the same nationality, she won’t be able to confer it by law.
For instance, Qatar’s nationality laws do not allow children to inherit nationality naturally from Qatari mothers under any circumstances. The only option for them is to acquire nationality through naturalisation. However, the process of obtaining nationality through naturalisation is mostly stringent, with only fifty applications accepted per year. With no guarantee of application acceptance, childhood statelessness is likely to be the most immediate outcome if the father is non-Qatari, unknown, stateless, or deceased.
The legal status of children results in their differential treatment and raises Will Kymlicka’s question: when do differentiated rights involve some real disadvantage or stigmatisation (and not just difference) in citizenship status? As stateless persons, they face barriers to accessing certain basic human rights. In public schools, stateless children, including those born to foreign fathers, cannot access state-sponsored education. At universities, they are treated as foreigners and are enrolled in the limited number of seats reserved for international students. Educational barriers inadvertently lead to employment barriers, particularly in the public sector, where jobs are reserved only for citizens. For example, certain jobs in Saudi Arabia, such as human resource managers, hotel receptionists, and cellular telephone workers, are reserved only for nationals.
Without nationality, individuals are also denied access to state-sponsored healthcare services and may be forced to seek treatment at private hospitals, where costs may exceed their financial means. For residency, these children rely on residency permits sponsored by their mothers. However, in some Gulf countries, such as Kuwait, mothers can only sponsor their children’s residency until they are minors. As adults, they must be sponsored by their employer. The condition has led mothers in Kuwait to fear the loss of their children’s residency in case they die before their children secure employment-based sponsorship. Although the impact on women requires further research, existing studies suggest that gender-discriminatory nationality laws are especially challenging for female stateless children, as they are more vulnerable to gender-based violence, including sexual exploitation, abduction, and trafficking.
Urgent Need for Nationality Reforms
The drastic implications of gender-based nationality frameworks on the affected individuals raise concerns among the international community. In this regard, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) 1979 is a landmark treaty that calls on state parties to grant women equal rights with men in conferring nationality on children. As a result, some MENA countries, such as Egypt (2004), Algeria (2005), Morocco (2007), Tunisia (2010), and Yemen (2010), have taken progressive steps to allow women to confer nationality.
The Gulf states, particularly the six GCC countries mentioned earlier, have been more reluctant in their approach and have made certain reservations to CEDAW, as nationality is an internal matter to be determined solely by state authorities. Therefore, there is an urgent need to strengthen the role of civil society organisations in these countries.
In this direction, the role of the Lebanon-based Collective for Research and Training on Development-Action (CRTDA) has been remarkable, as it initiated the Women’s Right to Nationality Campaign in the early 2000s and achieved legislative success in bringing about reforms in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and Yemen. Beyond existing international frameworks and treaties, strong advocacy efforts by such regional civil society organisations are crucial first steps in advancing gender-equal nationality regimes. Fundamentally, until gender-discriminatory laws are systematically dismantled, childhood statelessness will remain a severe barrier to fundamental human rights across the region.
