‘Netherlands violated child’s right to nationality’

GENEVA: The Netherlands violated a child’s rights by failing to acknowledge that he was stateless and eligible for international protection, a UN committee found on Tuesday, urging the country to change its legislation.

In its first ever decision on the right of children to acquire nationality, the UN Human Rights Committee determined that by registering the child as "nationality unknown", the Dutch authorities had violated his right to international protection and also to seek a nationality.

The case involves a boy named Denny, born in the Dutch city of Utrecht in 2010 to a Chinese mother who was trafficked to the Netherlands in 2004 at the age of 15 and forced into prostitution.

She escaped four years later, but since she herself had been abandoned at birth, she was not recorded in the civil registry in China and has been unable to obtain Chinese citizenship for herself, and unable to provide proof of Denny’s nationality. She was also unable to provide proof that her son was without a nationality, as required by Dutch law to be registered as stateless and apply for international protection.