On February 20, 2025, the United Nations Human Rights Committee found that Albania violated the rights of three Roma children by failing to register their births. This left them legally unrecognized and at the risk of statelessness.

The children were born in Greece to Albanian parents, who lacked legal residency status in Greece. Due to the lack of proper documentation, the parents were not able to obtain full birth registration and were only given basic documentation. They were prohibited from officially naming their children, leaving the children’s birth records incomplete.

Upon returning to Albania, the parents faced additional obstacles in registering their children. Albanian nationality law, Article 7 of Law No. 8389, states that any child born to an Albanian parent automatically acquires citizenship. However, this right depends on official birth registration, which the children lacked. This barred the children from accessing education, healthcare, and social services.

The parents brought their cases to the UN Human Rights Committee in 2018, after exhausting all domestic legal remedies. They argued that Albania had violated their rights under the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) including the right to acquire nationality, discrimination based on ethnicity, recognition as a person before the law, right to family life, right to take part in the conduct of public affairs.

The Human Rights Committee found that Albania had violated the children’s rights under Articles 16, 24(1), 24(3), and 26 of the ICCPR by failing to facilitate their birth registration and acquisition of Albanian nationality. The Committee also highlighted the disproportionate impact of Albanian laws on Roma communities, emphasizing that their history of migration and mobility makes them particularly vulnerable to discrimination and social exclusion. Albania now has 180 days to inform the Committee of the measures it is taking to implement the ruling and resolve the systemic barriers preventing Roma children from obtaining legal recognition.