EQUAL RIGHTS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 125, 30 May 1930, Page 3

EQUAL RIGHTS

WOMEN'S NATIONALITY

AMERICANS DEFEATED

The American women delegates to the Hague law codification conference were defeated in their efforts to eliminate what they considered inequalities in the convention on nationality, whea the plenary session voted 40 to 1 for the convention' as it stood, states the Boston "Christian Science Monitor."

The United' States delegation will re»' fuse to sign the general nationality convention, according to an announcement by David Hunter Miller. The United States delegates said they preferred to await a further and more progressive agreement which the discussions of the present'" conference will doubtless facilitate.

The inter-American' commission of women is again putting forward its draft treaty guaranteeing women's right to retain or renounce their allegiance and to transmit their nationality to their children on the same terms as the men, and to leave it before the.bai; of public opinion.

The. Hague nationality convention aims to be the first step toward aboil* tion of all cases both of statelessness and double nationality in a first attempt at the progressive codification of the laws of the world. The plenary conference further adopted two protocols, the first relating to military obligations in certain cases of double nationality, the second concerning statelessness, and also eight recommendations on the subject of nationality—all by a great maj« ority or unanimously.'. ■

One of these reeommendationa, adopted/by 36 votes to 2, urges that statei study the question of whether it is possible to introduce into their law the basis of equality of sexes in matters of nationality, particularly with a viewto insuring that the nationality of the wife henceforth be not affected without her consent, either by the mere fact of marriage or by any change in. the nationality of the husband. ■

Dr. Thomas Heemskirk, president of the conference," replying to ■ criticisms of his action in suppressing lobbying by women at the conference, writes: "For some time p. certain number of women, of the inter-American commission . of women have used. the great entrance hall of the Peace Palace for the purpose of propagating among the conference delegates their ideas concerning equal rights of men and women in nationality. These women have twice had an opportunity of explaining and advocating officially at the conference their wishes and ideas. ' .

"Should women desire to gain over delegates personally to their ideas, they are entirely free to do so elsewhere. But it cannot be tolerated that these women should remain in the Peace Palace, since they tried -to influence delegates to vote in the plenary session of the conference against the draft convention on nationality that- had been adopted by the first commission, so that they came not merely as strangers, but with the hostile intention of frustrating th« work of the conference.'.'