A/HRC/23/50 83. Constitutional guarantees of gender equality will be operative only if there is provision for effective judicial review of legislative and governmental action and women are empowered to process their claim for equality through the courts. Beyond State courts, the possibility of recourse to international and regional mechanisms opens access to interpretation of the constitutional provisions in line with the international and regional State obligation to respect, protect and fulfil women’s right to equality. 2. Nationality laws 84. Elimination of discrimination against women in political and public life necessitates reform of nationality laws. Women’s capacity to participate in political and public life is defined by their citizenship and nationality, but nationality laws often discriminate against women, particularly when they require a single nationality in a family and the wife’s nationality is treated as dependent on her husband’s. In effect, women lose their nationality upon marriage with a foreign husband, particularly if both countries of the spouses follow the principle of dependent nationality. If the country of the husband does not follow this principle, then the wife is at risk of becoming stateless, denying her the right to legitimately participate in the political and public life of any country.53 Laws which require women to seek permission from their husbands, or other family members traditionally defined as their guardians, in acquiring passports and other identity documents also potentially undermine women’s capacity to equal participation in political and public life, including through limited freedom of movement. 85. In recent years, many countries have repealed or amended discriminatory nationality provisions to allow women to transfer nationality to their children, and, albeit to a lesser extent, to foreign husbands, or to reduce the occurrence of statelessness. Some countries have lifted their reservations to article 9 of the Convention, mostly in relation to women passing on nationality to children (art. 9, para. 2). Nationality laws which discriminate against women have been challenged in the courts of many countries and in international human rights mechanisms, resulting in a number of positive court decisions.54 86. Women and girls belonging to minority communities, rural and indigenous women, migrant women, refugee women and those seeking asylum, and poor women face discriminatory practices in the implementation of laws on nationality and citizenship. They face prejudicial attitudes as well as structural obstacles which limit access to formal registration of births, marriage, residence and other citizenship documents as well as to relevant information on their rights as citizens. Women who are de facto heads of households, including those who have been abandoned by their husbands, whose divorce is not legally registered, or whose husbands have been forcibly disappeared and do not have death certificates for their husbands55, are denied recognition of their status in official documents. Without such access, women from these communities become disproportionately vulnerable in exercising their full and equal rights as citizens. 3. Preventing violence against women 87. For all women to have the capacity to exercise their right to equal and full participation in political and public life, States must provide a comprehensive legal framework to eliminate all forms of violence against women, including domestic violence, gender-based violence in conflict situations and under current or past dictatorships, and 53 54 55 See A/HRC/23/23, paras. 19–20. Ibid. See, for example, Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, Half Widow, Half Wife? Responding to Gendered Violence in Kashmir (2011). 19