The UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva Tuesday found that the Netherlands violated a child’s rights by failing to acknowledge that Denny Zhao, a child born 2010 in the Dutch city of Utrecht, was stateless and therefore eligible for international protections under the UN. The Committee further urged the country to change its legislation with regard to this issue.

This ground-breaking decision is the committee’s first on the right of a child to acquire a nationality. The UN Human Rights Committee determined that by registering a child as “nationality unknown” the Dutch authorities had violated the child’s right to international protection as well as the right to seek nationality under Dutch law.

Zhao’s mother is a Chinese national who was the victim of illegal human trafficking and brought into the Netherlands at the age of 15, and forced into prostitution. She escaped 4 years later and reported to the Dutch police what happened to her but, because her traffickers could not be identified, the police closed the investigation. She was then registered as an “illegal alien.” To complicate matters, she was unable to acquire Chinese citizenship for herself because she was abandoned at birth and therefore she was not recorded in any civil registry in China. This consequently meant that she could not provide proof of Zhao’s nationality.

As a result, Zhao was registered in the Dutch Municipal Personal Records Database with the annotation “unknown nationality.” In 2016, Zhao and his mother filed a petition to the UN Human Rights Committee in a bid to get further support via the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which the Netherlands is a State party signatory. This was because Zhao and his mother reside in a restricted freedom center for failed asylum seekers with young children and both living under the permanent threat of deportation.

“States have the responsibility to ensure that stateless children under their jurisdiction who have no possibility to acquire any other nationality are not left without legal protection,” Mr. Shuichi Furuya, one of the 14 Committee Members to take part in the decision, said following the decision. Mr. Furuya further stated that, “The right to nationality ensures concrete protection for individuals, in particular, children.” The committee referenced several official Dutch statistics showing that as of September 2016, over 13,000 children under 10 were registered in the country as having “unknown nationality” despite many of them having been born in the Netherlands.

The Committee requested the Netherlands to reconsider its decision on Zhao’s application to be registered as “stateless” as well as on his application to be recognized as a Dutch citizen. It also called on the country to provide Zhao with adequate compensation and to review its legislation on the matter. It further requested details on what measures have been taken to give effect to the Committee’s views on this issue.