A Nepali woman holds a sign as part of the World Bank 'Think EQUAL' campaign. Credit: Stephan Bachenheimer / World Bank
“Is it my fault that I don’t have a nationality?” a young Nepali girl asked recently on one of the country’s prime-time talk shows. “No it is not. It is your mother’s,” replied the male authority figure. The girl is one of countless women, men, girls and boys in the country who are classified as stateless, despite being born in Nepal to Nepali mothers.
Nepal remains one of twenty-six countries that denies women the equal right to confer nationality on their children, and one of roughly fifty that denies women the right to pass nationality to their spouses and to even acquire and retain their own nationality.
