Woman’s right to pass on citizenship to her children is set to take centre stage regarding the rights of women in Nepal in the upcoming meeting of the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW), the UN body on women, which kicks off in New York next week.

The government’s report is set to state that the citizenship row has officially ended in the country with the constitution saying that children of either a Nepali father or a Nepali mother will be eligible for citizenship by descent. On the other hand, the shadow report prepared by non-government organisations mentions “denying citizenship right to women” as the prime hurdle for them to enjoying their fundamental rights.

Organisations advocating gender friendly citizenship provisions have said citizenship law requires a woman to prove the whereabouts of her husband in order to pass on citizenship to her child, while the provision is silent on the case of the single male parent.

“The constitution has denied women freedom to choose her spouse, something ensured by the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Forget citizenship right to mothers, a mother, unlike the father, cannot register the birth of her child on her own,” said Tulasa Lata Amatya, executive director of the Community Action Centre Nepal.

Article 11.2 of the new constitution states that a person whose father ‘or’ mother is a Nepali at the time of his or her birth can become Nepali by descent. However, subsequent clauses 3 and 4 override the previous statement, which says both parents have to be Nepali for their children to acquire citizenship by descent, said legal experts.

Contrary to the constitutional provision that “there shall be no discrimination among citizens on the basis of marital status”, gender disparity prevails on naturalised citizenship as well. A foreign spouse of a Nepali man can get Nepali citizenship soon after marriage. There is no such provision for foreign spouses of Nepali women.

Existing laws allow non-Nepali women married to Nepali men to become citizens soon after they start the process of renouncing their original nationalities. But the constitution does not specify how long a non-Nepali man married to a Nepali woman has to wait before he can apply for Nepali citizenship.

Article 11.7 says that children of Nepali women married to non-Nepali men will not receive naturalised citizenship unless the husband becomes a Nepali citizen. No such provision exists for children of Nepali men married to non-Nepalis. The government insists that the charter does not discriminate against women. “The first article on citizenship clearly states that children of either Nepali father ‘or’ mother will be eligible for citizenship by descent and any other confusion in other articles will be cleared in the new laws and guidelines to be drafted in line with the constitution,” said Radhika Aryal, joint-secretary at Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare.