A/HRC/42/CRP.5 These provisions adversely affect women, who are less likely to speak an ethnic language. 86 A UNHCR assessment of a group of 2,000 Rohingya from Myebon Township, who received citizenship documentation in a pilot project that began in 2014, found “no tangible changes” in their overall situation and found that “their constraints on freedom of movement persist, as well as their access to basic services including education, health and livelihoods”.87 65. In 2017, the Rakhine Advisory Commission urged the authorities to review the 1982 Citizenship Law, acknowledge the arbitrary deprivation of nationality of the Rohingya community and restore their citizenship rights through a speedy administrative process developed through meaningful consultation with the Rohingya community. 88 The Mission is not aware of any steps taken by the Government to review the 1982 Citizenship Law. Instead, the Government has intensified its efforts to force Rohingya to enter into a citizenship verification process by accepting National Verification Cards (NVCs) that explicitly recognize cardholders as non-citizens who need to apply for citizenship. Moreover, without amendments to the Citizenship Law, the NVC process could at best give them the status of either associate or naturalised citizens, neither of which confers the same level of rights as enjoyed by full citizens, further entrenching long-standing discrimination against the Rohingya community. 1. National Verification Cards 66. The Government claims that the National Verification Card process is a means for it to assess, verify and confirm or grant citizenship to the Rohingya. 89 The process applies equally to Rohingya displaced internally, displaced across an international border and not displaced.90 An NVC declares that the holder is a “Bengali”,91 a term Rohingya reject as it 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 20 1983 procedures define certain criminal offences and set out severe penalties upon conviction. Section 18 of the Law stipulates criminal penalties and revocation of citizenship for persons who are considered to have “acquired citizenship by making a false representation or by concealment”. This can only apply to persons not considered as a “citizen by birth”. Persons who have lawfully acquired full citizenship are exempt from criminal penalties, except if they abet a crime. A range of other criminal penalties may apply only to “associate” and naturalized citizens; these can be imposed alongside revocation of citizenship. See also International Commission of Jurists, Citizenship and Human Rights in Myanmar: Why Law Reform is Urgent and Possible, June 2019. Available from https://www.icj.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Myanmar-Citizenship-law-reform-AdvocacyAnalysis-Brief-2019-ENG.pdf. FFFGEN-1-85650; The State may strip a naturalized citizen of her or his nationality on a number of grounds including, inter alia, communicating with a hostile organization; showing disloyalty to the State; conviction for a crime of moral turpitude (e.g. theft, adultery); committing an act likely to endanger Myanmar’s sovereignty and security; or on an executive order in the interest of the State. While there is close to parity with respect to literacy rates between men and women and within formal education in Myanmar, literacy among ethnic minority women is significantly lower. For example, only 45.9 per cent of Shan women are literate in comparison to 85.7 per cent of Shan men. See Myanmar Gender Situation Analysis (2016) Asian Development Bank, UNDP, UNFPA, UN Women. Study on Community Perceptions of Citizenship, Documentation and Rights in Rakhine State, UNHCR, August 2016, available at: https://www.themimu.info/sites/themimu.info/files/assessment_file_attachments/Community_Percept ions_FINAL.PDFhttps://www.equaltimes.org/citizenship-for-a-few-rights-for#.XUqlGORlKmQ, Reuters, 'We can't go anywhere': Myanmar closes Rohingya camps but 'entrenches segregation', 8 December 2018. Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, Final Report, Towards a peaceful, fair and prosperous future for the people of Rakhine (August 2017), pp. 26-28. FFFGEN-1-84054. FFFGEN-1-84054; Open decmocracy, “Why Rohingya refugees are resisting ID cards”, Burma Human Rights Network, National Verification Cards, A barrier to Rohingya Repatriation, July 2019, Eleven Myanmar, Myanmar ready for return of Bengali refugees, 31 May 2019. In 2014, The Government held a UN-backed national census and initially permitted Rohingya to identify themselves as Rohingya. However, The Government changed its decision after Buddhist nationalists threatened to boycott the census and decided Rohingya could only register if they identified as Bengali. See Council on Foreign Relations, “The Rohingya Crisis”, 5 December 2018.