Author:

Abstract

The right to nationality is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various international and regional human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the European Convention on Nationality. Nationality provides a link to a specific state, and, more importantly, it constitutes the condition sine qua non for the deployment of an array of human rights. Yet, states are unwilling to fully defer to international law the determination of the right to a nationality. This, in combination with gender-based discrimination in nationality laws, can strip individuals their right to a nationality. In the case of Syria, women cannot pass on their nationality to their children born in exile, creating a generation of stateless children. This paper analyses how the Women, Peace and Security (‘WPS’) agenda of the Security Council offers a solution to this problem and to challenge Syrian nationality laws. WPS provides a gender perspective and a human rights approach to conflict and post-conflict situations, including displacement. Nationality rights are only merely tackled in the WPS resolutions. Nonetheless, WPS is a strong tool to address the issue of statelessness created by the intersection of gender discriminatory laws, displacement, and an incomplete human rights framework.