STATELESS PERSONS’ SITUATION IN KENYA. In Kenya, we have an estimated 20,000 stateless persons. Kenya is host to 2,000 stateless Shona’s who originally fled from Zimbabwe when war broke out from their country. Some of these people have lived in Kenya for 50 years without documentation. They have gotten families in Kenya. This means that they do not have access to the rights and benefits that citizens enjoy. They live in poverty and at a risk of detention and discrimination. Few in the Shona community have a Kenyan birth certificate or identity card, necessary to attend school or university, open a bank account, get a job, passport or mobile phone, or enter government buildings. Without citizenship of either country they are; unable to travel back to Zimbabwe or buy land in Kenya. Kenya is home to some 100,000-stateless people from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Somalia and Asia, according to the Kenya Human Rights Commission many of whom were brought to work on Kenya's highland tea and coffee estates in colonial times.27 FACTORS LEADING TO STATELESSNESS. Transfer of sovereignty, processes relating to state succession, though there is mechanism to avoid this situation28 arbitral deprivation of citizenship, renunciation of nationality without acquisition of another nationality, gaps in citizenship laws for instance; No safeguards to prevent statelessness at birth and gender discrimination in citizenship laws. There are administrative causes of statelessness in Kenya which show a difference between the law and actual practice. The lack of regulation to guide the vetting process leads to unrealistic deadlines and overly slow processing times, excessive fees, lack of appeal. 27 http://www.unhcr.org/ke/10581-stateless-becoming-kenyan-citizens.html 28 Convention on the Avoidance of Statelessness in Relation to State Succession. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3079430