forces, sexual exploitation, child labour, human trafficking, early marriage, disinheritance, etc. Without a birth certificate, it is difficult to establish a child‟s parentage and his/her ties with the territory on which he/she was born. This puts the child in a precarious position when it comes to claiming a nationality and exposes him/her to the risk of becoming stateless. This alarming situation impelled the Committee to hold a theme day on birth registration and the rights of the child during its 20th session held in November 2012. At the conclusion of this day, the Committee decided to develop a General Comment on Article 6 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. The Article provides for the rights to a name, to birth registration and to acquire a nationality. 4. There are hundreds of thousands of people living in Africa who are stateless, and many more whose nationality is in doubt or dispute.4 The causes of this situation can be found in Africa‟s history, in the arbitrary creation of the borders of African States, in problems related to the transition from the colonial era to independence and more recent creations of states or transfers of territory, in both historical and contemporary migration, and in deficiencies in nationality laws and their implementation. 5. All African States have rules providing for the conferral of their nationality 5 established in their constitutions and/or in other legislation. However, these laws often do not reflect the States‟ commitments to avoid statelessness established by Articles 6(3) and 6(4) of the African Children‟s Charter. In addition, many African nationality laws are in conflict with basic principles enshrined in the African Children‟s Charter and other human rights treaties. 6. In particular, around one dozen African states discriminate between men and women with regard to the right to confer their nationality on their children. A smaller number of African States have laws with provisions that explicitly discriminate on the 4 UNHCR estimates that there were at least 10 million stateless people globally in 2011, with the recognition that this is a very approximate figure. See “Stateless People” at http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c155.html, accessed 3 March 2014. 5 Note that the countries with English as an official language often have laws that refer to “citizenship” rather than “nationality”. In the context of this General Comment and in international law, the terms citizenship and nationality are used interchangeably. 3