WUNRN
First
Comprehensive Analysis of Africa's Citizenship Laws
Highlights
Consequences of Gender & Ethnic Discrimination
(Kampala, Uganda, 21 October 2009)—The lack of citizenship rights generates
conflict and undermines democracy in many countries in Africa, according to two
new studies by the Open Society Institute. The reports, the culmination of
years of research, analyze citizenship laws from all 53 countries in Africa.
Released on African Human Rights Day, the reports recommend that countries
amend their constitutions and laws and that the African Union adopt a treaty on
the right to nationality.......
Key
Findings Include:
• Only a handful of African countries provide in law for children born on their
soil to have a right to their nationality if they would otherwise be stateless,
despite the provisions of international treaties that require this protection.
• The laws of at least half a dozen countries, including the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Liberia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Uganda, include
provisions that restrict nationality from birth to members of certain ethnic
groups.
• More than half of Africa's countries still discriminate against women and
deny them the right to pass citizenship to their children or husbands.
• Though almost all countries have laws allowing foreigners to naturalise, in
practice, citizenship is often almost impossible to obtain.
• Half of Africa's states allow revocation of a person's birth nationality and
in many countries governments can rescind naturalised citizenship on highly
arbitrary grounds.
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 Citizenship
Law in Africa: A comparative study
Open
Society Institute
21 October 2009
Few African countries provide for an explicit right to a nationality. Laws
and practices governing citizenship effectively leave hundreds of thousands
of people in Africa without
a country. These stateless Africans can neither vote nor stand for office;
they cannot enrol their children in school, travel freely, or own property;
they cannot work for the government; they are exposed to human rights abuses.
Statelessness exacerbates and underlies tensions in many regions of the
continent. Citizenship Law in Africa, a comparative study by two programs of the Open
Society Institute, describes the often arbitrary, discriminatory, and
contradictory citizenship laws that exist from state to state and recommends
ways that African countries can bring their citizenship laws in line with
international rights norms. The report covers topics such as citizenship by
descent, citizenship by naturalization, gender discrimination in citizenship
law, dual citizenship, and the right to identity documents and passports. It
is essential reading for policymakers, attorneys, and activists.
The report is also
available on the Open Society Justice Initiative
website. More advocacy materials are at the Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative website.
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|
 Struggles
for Citizenship in Africa
Zed Books
21 October 2009
Hundreds of thousands of people living in Africa find themselves non-persons in the only state they
have ever known. Because they are not recognised as citizens, they cannot get
their children registered at birth; they cannot access state health services;
they cannot obtain employment without a work permit; and if they leave the
country they may not be able to return. Most of all, they cannot vote, stand
for office, or work for state institutions. Ultimately, such policies can
lead to economic and political disaster, or even war. The conflicts in both Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo have had at their
hearts the right of one part of the national population to share with others
on equal terms the rights and duties of citizenship. This book brings
together new material from across Africa of the most egregious examples of citizenship
discrimination, and makes the case for urgent reform of the law. It is
twinned with the report published by the Open Society Institute Citizenship
Law in Africa: A Comparative Study. Chapter one of the book is available
below, and the other chapters can be downloaded by clicking on the link for
'download the report in sections', or from the Open Society Justice Initiative
website. The book is available for purchase from the Zed Books Website.
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