From the Daily Times comes news that the Saudis have denied granting nationality to a Pakistani man's children, even though they were born in Saudi Arabia, and their mother is a Saudi national:
Saudi Arabia has denied citizenship to the daughters of a Pakistani man and his Saudi wife, highlighting the kingdom’s continued employment of gender-biased laws...
The Shoura Council recently approved legislation whereby Saudi citizenship is now to be granted to foreign-born wives and widows of Saudi men. However, the problem, as Mohammed Noor Baksh — a 60-year-old Pakistani driver married for the last 27 years to a Saudi woman — discovered is that the new legislation fails to afford citizenship to the non-Saudi husbands of Saudi women. But even in such cases, the law still offers more protection to the male children of non-Saudi fathers. Boys, on reaching 18 years of age, are eligible to apply for citizenship. By contrast, the only hope for girls to attain citizenship is if they marry a Saudi man.
Guess what, Daily Times? That's the exact same law in Pakistan. In fact, there were moves to change this law in parliament recently, by members of the People's Party - but the government party refused to allow this change. Too bad we recently missed a chance at rectifying the kingdom's, oops I mean Pakistan's "continued employment of gender-biased laws."
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