Court name: Human Rights Committee
State: Denmark
Date of decision:

Denmark refused to grant the applicant an exemption from the language proficiency requirement and the nationality test in order to become naturalised. The applicant claimed that Denmark violated his rights under Article 26 of the Covenant. The Human Rights Committee considered that, in failing to provide the applicant with any information about the reasoning in its decision on his application or the grounds for refusing his application for an exemption from the language proficiency requirement and the nationality test, Denmark had failed to demonstrate that its decision was based on reasonable and objective grounds. Therefore, the Committee found that the applicant's rights under Article 26 of the Covenant had been violated.

Court name: Court of Appeals of Gipuzkoa
State: Spain
Date of decision:

A 7-year-old child arrived in Spain irregularly by boat in April 2018. She was born in Morocco to a Cameroonian mother while they were on a journey to Europe, and due to the circumstances the child’s birth was not registered. Her mother contacted the Cameroonian and Moroccan embassies in Spain, but she never succeeded in registering her birth nor recognising her Cameroonian nor Moroccan nationality. The child was thus stateless, as declared in the first instance judgment and confirmed on appeal. The Provincial Court of Guipúzcoa held that the mother had made a genuine effort to remove all bureaucratic obstacles to have the child’s Cameroonian nationality recognised. The Court held that the safeguard established in the Spanish Civil Code to prevent statelessness of children born in Spain should be applied broadly and by analogy, as this is the only interpretation in compliance with international treaties to which Spain is a party and with the principle of the best interests of the child. Therefore it found that there was a violation of the child's fundamental rights and declared that the child held Spanish nationality and agreed to order the Central Civil Registry to register the birth of the child.