53 is not stipulated in either the Constitution or the Civil Code of the Dominican Republic (hereinafter “Civil Code”), or in Act No. 659; (c) Most of the requirements for late registration of birth established in the guidelines issued by the Civil Status Registry Office and not by law bear no relationship to proving birth on Dominican territory and are therefore disproportionate and unnecessary. This is especially pertinent in relation to individuals of Haitian origin who live in the bateyes. Restrictions to obtaining nationality should fulfill certain requirements to be considered legitimate and non-arbitrary. They should: (1) be established by law; (2) be nondiscriminatory; (3) pursue a legitimate purpose, and (4) strictly respect the principles of need and proportionality, and (d) To prove a child’s identity, States usually ask for a either a birth certification or a baptism certificate or a certification from a midwife or the hospital, but not all of these documents simultaneously. Since, under the ius soli system, it is only necessary for the child to have been born on the State’s territory, the father’s legal status is irrelevant and the parents only have to prove their relationship to the child by means of any common identity document, such as an identity card or a driving license. 117. With regard to Article 24 of the American Convention, the representatives argued that: (a) The State had violated Articles 24 and 1(1) of the American Convention by introducing into its laws discriminatory regulations relating to legal protection and by applying them to the alleged victims, owing to the intentionality of the discriminatory acts of the public officials when refusing to grant them the birth declarations, and to the discriminatory effects produced by the application of the laws that regulate registration. To justify a distinction that affects children principally, it must be shown clearly that the violation of their rights is absolutely necessary to achieve a public interest objective, and the State did not prove this; (b) There is no relationship between granting nationality and preventing the trafficking of children or electoral fraud and, even though these may be legitimate objectives, the means to achieve them are incompatible with the protection of human rights; (c) International law prohibits direct discrimination as well as indirect discrimination or the discriminatory effect, and (d) The regulations introduced into the laws of the Dominican Republic have a discriminatory effect on Dominicans of Haitian origin, resulting from a series of requirements demanded by Dominican officials in order to grant late declarations of birth, which, in practice, prevent the former from obtaining Dominican nationality. 118. Regarding Article 3 of the Convention, the representatives indicated that: (a) The right to juridical personality is protected by numerous international instruments and may never be suspended. In the Dominican Republic, the birth certificate is the legal document used as official proof of