On March 24, 2022, Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teodoro Locsin deposited the instrument of ratification for the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty and the instrument of accession to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Accordingly, both treaties will enter into force in the Philippines on June 22, 2022.
The Arms Trade Treaty is an agreement that regulates international trade in conventional weapons and seeks to prevent illicit trade in and diversion of conventional arms through the establishment of international standards governing weapons transfers.
The treaty went into force in 2014 and currently has 110 signatory parties. The Philippines signed the treaty in 2013, which, according to Secretary Locsin, made it the first country in Southeast Asia to sign and ratify it.
The objective of the 1961 convention is to prevent statelessness and reduce it over time. It sets an international framework to ensure the right of every individual to a nationality, and requires that signatory parties establish safeguards in their nationality laws to prevent statelessness at birth and thereafter.
A salient provision of the convention establishes that children are to acquire the nationality of their country of birth if they do not acquire any other citizenship. It also establishes safeguards to prevent statelessness caused by the loss or renunciation of nationality.
The convention provides limited situations in which states can deprive persons of their nationality, even if this would render them stateless, including instances in which nationality was obtained by misrepresentation or fraud and cases where individuals conduct themselves in a manner seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of a signatory state.