1. Lack of Legal Safeguards Against Childhood Statelessness
Turkmenistan’s citizenship legislation does not provide access to citizenship for children born to two stateless parents either of whom do not qualify as habitual residents of the territory. This lack of protection enhances the risk of intergenerational statelessness. For children born to two stateless persons within the territory, the child will be a citizen if at least one parent is habitually resident in the territory. The Law also provides that a child born in the territory to two foreign citizen parents who is not granted citizenship of the state(s) of the parents citizenship, will be a citizen of Turkmenistan. Foundling children born or resident in Turkmenistan will also be citizens provided that the whereabouts and citizenship of the parents are unknown. Further, if a citizen of Turkmenistan is found to be the father of a child with a stateless mother, the child will be a citizen regardless of birthplace.
2. Citizenship Stripping
Article 4 of Turkmenistan’s citizenship law states that citizens cannot be deprived of their citizenship. Appealing other decisions relating to nationality is possible by lodging a complaint addressed to the President of Turkmenistan, who may revise the decision.
3. Administrative Barriers
In January 2020, the new Law on Civil Status Acts, came into force ensuring universal birth registration and prevention of childhood statelessness. Before the introduction of the Law, children born to parents who were undocumented, stateless, or who had undetermined nationalities had low access to birth registration due to the requirement of parents to show documentation to register their child’s birth. Turkmenistan’s reported birth registration rate is 99.9% .
The Constitution states that citizenship certifying documents in Turkmenistan are a passport of a citizen of Turkmenistan or another government- issued document confirming nationality. For children under 16, nationality can be confirmed by either a birth certificate or passport of one of their parents who is a citizen of Turkmenistan. Therefore, while birth registration is not required in all cases to gain citizenship in Turkmenistan, it is important to have it in the event of loss of passport and for children under 16 who have not yet applied for their passport. On this, reports of state authorities requesting citizens to give up their passports is problematic for ensuring everyone in the country has the necessary documentation to certify citizenship. In Lebap province in particular, state authorities also reportedly urged state employees to refrain from applying for a passport. In some cases, passports have also been confiscated by employers without providing explanation for the confiscation.
