Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights

KEY FACTS ABOUT THE GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR EQUAL NATIONALITY RIGHTS

• The Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights (GCENR) was established in 2014, to mobilize international action to end gender discrimination in nationality laws. 

• Globally, 24 countries prevent mothers from conferring their nationality on their children on an equal basis with fathers, and 40+ countries deny women equal rights with men in the conferral of nationality to non-national spouses.  

• Equal nationality rights are crucial to preventing statelessness, protecting women, children and family rights, and ensuring social cohesion and national development. 

• GCENR brings together local, regional and international NGOs, academics, civil society partners, UN agencies, and government allies to contribute to the aims of the campaign, through research, advocacy, knowledge sharing, capacity building and activism.  

WHAT IS THE GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR EQUAL NATIONALITY RIGHTS

The Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights (GCENR/The Campaign) seeks to end gender discrimination in nationality laws through advocacy, research, and coalition building at national, regional, and international levels. The Campaign draws from its research and membership to target law and policy makers as a collective voice, mobilising action to achieve law reform for women and men to have the equal right to acquire, change and retain their nationality and to pass their nationality to their children and spouses.  

Often a remnant of colonial laws, gender discrimination with respect to the conferral of nationality on children remains an issue in 24 countries globally, while more than 40 countries discriminate in the rules surrounding transfer of nationality to a spouse, or the ability to acquire, change, or retain nationality. This runs counter to international law standards, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  

The Campaign was launched at a side event to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in June 2014, as a multistakeholder effort to ensure that the principle of equal nationality rights is fully respected, around the world. Following its launch, the Campaign quickly expanded its coalition membership to include national organisations based in regions around the world, and enhanced partnerships with UNICEF, UN Women and UNHCR.  

Today, the GCENR’s coalition membership stretches across over 20 countries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The membership is primarily national women’s rights organisations, though some members are focussed on children’s rights, combatting statelessness and advancing nationality rights, youth leadership, and sustainable development, as well as some regionally or globally focussed members. Coalition members contribute to the Campaign in a variety of ways, including through local activism, international advocacy, knowledge sharing, capacity building and research. The Campaign is housed within the Women’s Refugee Commission , coordinating the collective expertise of its membership to create impact. It is guided and supported by a Steering Committee comprising civil society and UN organisations.  

The Campaign plays a key bridging role in elevating attention and action to advance gender-equal nationality rights in both the statelessness and gender equality sectors, through serving on the advisory committees for the Global Alliance to End Statelessness, the Global Movement Against Statelessness, the Equality in Law for Women and Girls by 2030 strategy, and as a Steering Committee member of the Global Statelessness Fund.

KEY OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES OF THE GLOBAL CAMPAIGN

Key areas of the Global Campaign’s work include advocacy at national, regional, and global levels, and targeted capacity building with civil society, youth, government and UN agencies. Additionally, the Campaign develops thematic resources and tools, including guides and short videos, while supporting a network of impacted activists as a space for solidarity, capacity building, and developing plans for collaborative action.  

Alongside synthesis reports that look at the manifestation of the issue globally, the Campaign has published resources that explore the intersections between gender discrimination in nationality laws and gender-based violence, racism and related intolerance, migration, and childhood statelessness. The Campaign publishes research and tools that support policymakers and lawmakers at every stage in the process of understanding and reforming gender discrimination in their nationality laws. This includes how to interpret their obligations in relation to gender equal nationality rights through the provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as providing draft legal articles that support states to deliver on these obligations. For advocates and activists, the Campaign has provided guidance on how to enforce those nationality rights through leveraging UN human rights mechanisms.   

Through its high-level advocacy and engagement with policymakers, the Campaign has positioned nationality law reform as fundamental to the principle of (gender) equal citizenship. One example of the Campaign’s impact can be seen through how the issue has gained a significant profile within the UN human rights system in the years it has been active. In an analysis of the Third Cycle of the Universal Periodic Review, promoting gender equality in nationality laws stood as the most successful example of nationality and statelessness related topics being mainstreamed in the UPR; promoting gender equality constituted almost a quarter of nationality and statelessness-related recommendations made in the Third Cycle (143 out of a total of 635) and was widely understood to be a cross-cutting human rights issue affecting women’s participation in society and the impact this can have on children.  

The Campaign has directly supported reform efforts in various countries across multiple regions, including the successful legal reforms ensuring equal nationality rights regarding the conferral of nationality to children in Malaysia  and Madagascar. For example, alongside national coalition member, Focus Development, and other partners Equal Rights Trust, UNHCR and OHCHR, the Campaign organised a series of engagements with the Madagascan parliament in November 2015, including a technical workshop, bilateral meetings, and powerful interventions in a debate in the National Assembly. At these events, more than 20 Madagascan parliamentarians signed a pledge to reform the nationality code to align with the Constitution’s prohibition on discrimination on the basis of sex, with the National Assembly president pledging his personal commitment to put forward a draft bill eradicating gender discrimination in the nationality law. The law was passed in January 2017, guaranteeing the equal rights of all citizens to confer nationality on their children. 

BRINGING STAKEHOLDERS TOGETHER TO ADVANCE THE GLOBAL CAMPAIGN

Multistakeholder convenings form a core component of the Campaign’s advocacy and capacity building work. In October 2017, the Campaign cosponsored the 1st Arab League Conference on Women’s Nationality Rights alongside the Arab League, UNHCR, UN Women, and UNICEF. The conference resulted in a groundbreaking and ambitious outcome statement, endorsed by the Secretary General of the Arab League, calling on Arab League Member States to uphold equal nationality rights for all citizens, regardless of gender, and laying the foundations for the Arab Declaration on Belonging and Legal Identity. 

The Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights organised a Global Multistakeholder Summit on Advancing Gender Equality in Nationality Laws in 2024, building on its previous 2023 Global Summit on Gender Equality in Nationality Laws. These convenings drew attention to wide-ranging human rights violations caused by gender discrimination and enhanced the capacity and collaboration between MPs, government representatives, civil society and impacted activists to support reform efforts.  

In 2024, GCENR also held the first Youth Summit on Gender Equality in Nationality Laws, bringing together participants including youth activists from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, to share experience, build new networks and empower leadership. A key milestone for longer-term investment in youth advocates, the 27 participants represented 16 countries, 12 of which had gender discriminatory nationality laws. Plans for youth-led advocacy initiatives were developed, contributing to a more sustainable and impactful youth movement dedicated to achieving gender equality in nationality laws. 

The text on this page was reviewed by the Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights

[Last updated: September 2025]