‘Anti-women’ citizenship bill sparks fury in Nepal

KATHMANDU, Dec 23 (AFP): Nepalese single mother Deepti Gurung has spent years trying and failing to register her two teenage daughters as citizens of their country.
Although her children were both born in Nepal, the 40-year-old has struggled to secure their legal right to citizenship in the absence of their father, who left when they were small.
For now at least the law is on her side. But Nepal's parliament is proposing to bar all single parents from passing on their citizenship to their children in a new national constitution, sparking outrage among rights activists.
"It is like being a refugee in your own country," said Gurung.
"All they do is interrogate, torture and harass women, demanding the father's documents... when a father applies for his children's citizenship, no questions are asked."
Activists say the move could leave a million people stateless and will disproportionately affect women, who account for the vast majority of single parents in Nepal.
The draft bill says both parents must be Nepalese for their child to acquire citizenship, which is needed to get anything from a driving licence to a bank account.
It will overturn a 2006 act that says children are eligible for citizenship as long as one parent is Nepalese.
The Forum for Women, Law and Development (FWLD), a Nepalese pressure group, says the move will impact a million children, with more than 90 per cent of those affected living with single mothers.
"On paper the law looks restrictive to both men and women," said Subin Mulmi of the FWLD.