WUNRN
Comprehensive Analysis of Africa's Citizenship Laws
Highlights Consequences of Gender and 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 today 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 a nationality.
"Throughout Africa, millions are stateless and denied basic rights",
said Bronwen Manby, senior adviser on Africa at the Open Society Institute and
author of the reports. "The African Union needs to sit up and take notice
of this crisis."
The denial of citizenship rights has devastating human consequences.
Millions of Africans without citizenship are deprived of the right to vote, to
cross borders, and to access state health or education services.
Citizenship discrimination is a major cause of conflict in many countries, most
notoriously in Côte d'Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Politicians
in both countries have demonized particular ethnic groups and discrimination in
the application of the law has stripped millions of people of their
nationality. In these countries and many others, individuals born and raised on
a country's soil are barred from ever obtaining citizenship purely because
their ancestry.
The studies document how incumbent governments have also manipulated
citizenship laws to exclude prominent individuals from claiming public office.
Former Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda and Ivoirian prime minister Alassane
Ouattara are two prominent cases discussed in the reports.
The reports will be unveiled at a special summit in Kampala, where African
heads of state are set to adopt an agreement on the protection of internally
displaced persons. Lack of citizenship—a frequent cause of conflict and
displacement—can be especially problematic for Africa's almost 12 million
internally displaced persons. Without citizenship protections these people are
easily excluded from services and political rights.
"The idea that someone can live here but belong nowhere is plainly
un-African", said Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, senior legal officer of the Open
Society Justice Initiative. "By enshrining the right to a nationality in
national and continental law, African governments would honour our traditions
of building inclusive communities and help to eliminate conflict."
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.
Encouragingly, more than a dozen countries have amended their laws in recent
years to reduce or eliminate gender discrimination. More than half Africa's
states now allow dual citizenship, recognising the reality of contemporary
patterns of migration.
Moreover, the laws in more than half of the continent's countries grant
children born on their soil the right to nationality at birth if one of their
parents was also born there, or the right to claim birth nationality when they
reach the age of majority—though the observance of these laws is often lacking.
The reports include a detailed set of recommendations for African countries to
reform national citizenship laws and adopt a protocol on the right to a
nationality to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.
"The first step is for African countries to follow the international
conventions and ensure that all children who don't have a right to nationality
anywhere else, have the right to nationality where they are born", said
Manby.
The two publications released today are:
They were produced as a collaboration between two programmes of the Open
Society Institute: AfriMAP and the Open Society Justice Initiative.
The Africa Governance, Monitoring and Advocacy Project Press release
____________________________________________________________________
Citizenship
Law in Africa: A comparative study The report, which is
twinned with the Zed Books publication Struggles for Citizenship in Africa,
featured below, is also available on the Open Society Justice Initiative
website. Additional resources are at the Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative website.
The report of the launch event in
|
||||
Struggles
for Citizenship in Africa
|
================================================================
To contact the list administrator, or to leave the list, send an email to:
wunrn_listserve-request@lists.wunrn.com. Thank you.