The Jesuit Refugee Service (Romania), European Network on Statelessness (ENS), and Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI) made a joint submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child for the 95th Pre-Sessional Working Group, focusing on Romania’s compliance with the right of every child to acquire a nationality.
The submission focused on the lack of a safeguard for otherwise stateless children born in Romania to acquire a nationality, challenges with birth registration, and access to protection and naturalisation for stateless migrant and refugee children.
Based on the content of this submission, we made the following recommendations and asked the Committee urge the Romanian Government to:
- Enact legislation to ensure that all children born in Romania who would otherwise be stateless can acquire a nationality as soon as possible after birth, regardless of the status or identity of their parents;
- Introduce a mechanism to determine the nationality of children born in Romania to non-Romanian parents, to guarantee the child’s right to a nationality.
- Implement effective awareness-raising campaigns and training programmes to ensure that parents of stateless children are informed of their rights to birth registration and nationality; and birth registration officials register births in a non-discriminatory manner, in line with the CRC.
- Introduce measures to identify (risk of) statelessness of children born in Romania, children born to Romanian parents abroad, or children who arrive in Romania, to enable them to fulfil their right to acquire a nationality.
- Take measures to ensure universal access to birth registration for all children born in Romania, including those whose births were not registered within the 15-day timeframe, children of same-sex parents, and children with a migratory background.
- Introduce a statelessness determination procedure which complies with the requirements of the 1954 Convention and the CRC (in particular with respect to procedures appropriate for children), and a route to facilitated naturalisation for stateless people.
