Kazakhstan’s Constitutional Court Rules That Nationality Can Be Determined Without Parents’ Data

If a child's parents are unknown, this is no longer a valid reason to deny the child a nationality, Orda.kz reports.

 The Constitutional Court found that existing legal provisions fail to reflect real-life circumstances.

The ruling clarifies that a child’s nationality can now be established without relying solely on the parents' identities. The Court ruled that Article 65 of the Marriage and Family Code — permitting nationality to be recorded only based on parental information — violates an individual's right to self-identification:

The choice based on the nationality of the parents is certainly dominant, however, it is not always possible due to various life situations (the parents are unknown, there is no information about their nationality, the child is adopted or raised by other people, etc.). Article 65 of the Family Code does not take such situations into account and thus does not fully comply with what is laid down in the Constitution.

The case reviewed by the Court concerned a child whose mother passed away without documentation and whose father was unknown. When the guardian attempted to enter the child's nationality, they were denied.

The guardian appealed, arguing the law infringed on the child's rights.

The Court supported the claim, affirming that the right to declare or withhold nationality is protected under the Constitution. It noted that strict reliance on parental data can violate rights in certain situations.

Still, the Court allowed for state verification where legal consequences are involved.

The Constitutional Court found the said article of the Family Code to be unconstitutional in the part that does not provide for other (except for parents) methods of determining and changing nationality in cases where the child’s parents or their nationality are unknown, as well as in other life situations affecting the legitimate interests of citizens.

Original Author: Alina Pak