A/HRC/31/29 generally have no claim. All other human rights are to be enjoyed by all persons, including children who have been arbitrarily deprived of their nationality. 54 28. There is no legal basis upon which States that have arbitrarily deprived a child of his or her nationality can justify the denial of other human rights to the child on grounds of his or her resulting statelessness. Repeatedly, however, the invisibility of stateless children to the eyes of society causes the violation of their rights to go unnoticed. 55 29. The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, in its general comment on article 6 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, stated that the overall negative impact of statelessness on children cannot be overemphasized. “While it is always no fault of their own, stateless children often inherit an uncertain future […:] difficulty to travel freely, difficulty in accessing justice procedures when necessary, as well as the challenge of finding oneself in a legal limbo vulnerable to expulsion from their home country. Statelessness is particularly devastating to children in the realization of their socio-economic rights such as access to health care, and access to education.” Other challenges to the enjoyment of human rights that stateless children face include obtaining a birth certificate and other forms of legal and identity documentation and benefiting from social security. Stateless children may furthermore be vulnerable to arbitrary and lengthy detention and, in extreme cases, vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.56 30. The principles of non-discrimination, enshrined in all core international human rights instruments, and of the best interests of the child, contained in article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, are, as noted above, guiding principles in the realization of the rights of the child. The most pervasive and negative human rights consequence of the arbitrary deprivation of nationality of children is the continuous violation of their right to be free from discrimination and the ongoing disregard for their best interests. Such a situation has, in turn, a negative impact on their enjoyment of all other human rights. A. Right to an identity 31. The right to an identity is intimately linked to the right to a nationality. 57 Article 8 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child requires States to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations. The arbitrary deprivation of nationality strips the child of a key element of his or her identity and undermines the enjoyment of other elements of the child’s identity. The nexus between the arbitrary deprivation of nationality of children and the denial of other aspects of a child’s identity, and the impact this has on the enjoyment of other human rights, was addressed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights when it stated that, by not granting children nationality, the State concerned placed them “in a situation of extreme vulnerability” and that it “violated their right to nationality as well as other rights, namely: the right to 54 55 56 57 10 International law allows for certain restrictions on the rights of non-nationals, for example, in relation to freedom of movement or the right to work. This is a disadvantage to stateless persons, who have no nationality. Such restrictions must nevertheless be construed so as to avoid undermining the basic prohibition of discrimination (see Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, general recommendation No. 30,CERD/C/64/Misc.11/Rev.3, para. 2) Submission from the Human Rights Procurator’s Office of Nicaragua. UNCHR, I am here, I belong (see footnote 1), p. 18. Submission of Ecuador.