Criminalising motherhood

It is unjust to link a child’s identity solely to the father, disregarding the mother’s presence.

Nepal has long struggled to ensure citizenship for children in the name of their mothers. Following the Badi women’s movement for equal citizenship rights in the 1990s, the Supreme Court in 2005 ordered the government of Nepal to issue citizenship to every child, regardless of their father’s identity. Yet such citizenships would still indicate: “ father not identified ”. The Nepal Citizenship Act 2006 did guarantee citizenship through mothers in Articles 11 2(b) and 11 (5), but again the question of the father’s whereabouts hindered the process. The much-anticipated 2015 constitution allowed individuals to obtain citizenship by descent through their mothers—but only if the child’s father is unidentified or untraceable. The Act was first amended in 2022 , but it did not necessarily end the discrimination.