Maybe a scenario many of us don’t want to be involved in, but have you ever thought about what nationality a baby born on an airplane receives? Well, it turns out it really depends on where their parents are from, where is the airplane flying, and even where the plane was originally registered.
It happens that in a hypothetical situation where a pregnant woman boards the plane and during the flight time she goes into labor, the baby born on board has the right to a nationality, but it all depends on many circumstances.
There are three solutions to this. The first is the location of the plane. Many countries apply a term called jus soli (in Latin “right of soil”) which states that any person born in its soil, be it land, air, or water, has the right to its citizenship.
Since this was part of the English common law, is more common in the American continent such as Canada, the United States, most of Latin America, and some Caribbean countries.
Even though there are some requirements, most of them grant citizenship to anyone born on either its soil or in a vessel that is in its water or airspace, like airplanes.
For other countries, the right to citizenship is determined by blood, meaning that if one or both parents are from a given country, then their baby has the right to the same citizenship no matter where was born. This is called jus sanguinis.
Most European and Asian countries follow this rule, like Germany, France, or China.
But there are sometimes that neither of these solutions applies and for some reason, the baby cannot apply to citizenship by blood. In that case, the third solution is to give the newborn the nationality of the plane. In other words, the baby would receive the citizenship of the country in which the aircraft was registered, no matter where takeoff or landing happens.
This is a very particular case that applies to some refugees that seek asylum and cannot give their babies is nationality for security reasons.
