UN Human Rights Committee Says Netherlands Violates Nationality Rights

Jakarta: The Netherlands has violated a child’s rights by registering children under the category “nationality unknown” as opposed to Stateless – leaving them ineligible to access international protections, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee said on Tuesday.  
 
"States have the responsibility to ensure that stateless children under their jurisdiction who have no possibility to acquire any other nationality are not left without legal protection," said committee member Shuichi Furuya. 
 
In its statement, the Committee referred to a petition by a boy named Denny who in 2010 was born in the Dutch city of Utrecht to a 21-year-old mother from China.

When she was 15, Denny's mother was trafficked to the Netherlands in 2004.
 
As Denny's mother was abandoned by her parents and never recorded in China’s civil registry as being born, she herself could not obtain Chinese citizenship nor provide proof of Denny's nationality.  
 
As a result, Denny is registered in the Dutch Municipal Personal Records Database with the annotation "unknown nationality". 
 
To complicate matters further, without the conclusive proof required by Dutch law that her son has no nationality, Denny's mother is unable to change his status from "unknown" to "Stateless", leaving him unable to apply for international protection for Stateless children.   
 
In a bid to garner protection, Denny and his mother filed a petition to the Committee in 2016 
 
The Committee requested the Netherlands to reconsider its decision on Denny’s application to be registered as Stateless as well as on his application to be recognized as a Dutch citizen.  
 
According to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, as of September 2016, more than 13,150 children under the age of 10 were registered with “unknown nationality”, many of whom had been born in the Netherlands. 
 
The Committee urged the country to review its legislation to establish a procedure for determining Statelessness status as well on eligibility to apply for citizenship. 
 
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