Latvia, Law and Regulations, Legislation, Society

Speaking during a discussion about the need to stop giving people the status of a non-citizen in Latvia, Jansons said that both the international law and the Latvian national laws provided for the children's rights to citizenship.

Under the Latvian Citizenship Law as amended in 2013, the procedure for non-citizens' children to get the Latvian citizenship was eased so that the newborns could be registered as the Latvian citizens at the request of one of the parents with the non-citizen status.

This provision requires the parents to express their will to get the Latvian citizenship for their child, and it is the parents' obligation to act in the best interests of the child but leaving the child without any citizenship is not in the child's best interests, the ombudsman stressed.

With non-citizen parents being reluctant to exercise their statutory right and to claim the Latvian citizenship for their newborn children, Latvia should improve its legislation, so that the Latvian citizenship should be given to babies automatically, unless the parents expressly waived it in favor of a citizenship of another country, Jansons suggested.