STATELESSNESS AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY Overview of the report This study seeks to provide a comparative analysis of nationality law and its implementation in Partner States of the EAC and highlight the gaps that allow statelessness; to identify the populations that may be stateless or at risk of statelessness and the reasons why statelessness remains prevalent; and to make recommendations for the remedies that may address the problem both at national and regional level. These recommendations are directed to actions that may be taken by the institutions of the EAC; by Partner States acting in cooperation and individually, and by other regional institutions whose mandates cover statelessness-related issues, such as the ICGLR. Gaps in nationality laws that leave some people without recognition of the nationality of any country include racial, ethnic, religious and gender discrimination, especially in law but also in practice; the almost exclusively descent-based nationality law in most EAC Partner States, even for children who cannot obtain the nationality of their parents; the inaccessibility of naturalisation procedures; the lack of an effective framework to regulate the nationality of those persons following a nomadic lifestyle, and the absence of national and regional procedures for the identification and protection of stateless persons. In addition, the failure to acknowledge significant colonial-era population transfers and to grant nationality systematically to the populations resident in EAC Partner States at the time of transition to independence still has consequences today. The result is that nationality laws and administration in the region do not effectively provide the possibility of integration as nationals of a new country to migrants and their descendants, leaving a significant number with no recognition of nationality where they live, but also no real connections to a country “of origin” enabling them to claim nationality there. Underlying these problems is the weakness of civil registration systems. Only Burundi has a birth registration rate of more than 80 percent; in Kenya it is 67 percent and in Rwanda 56 percent, while in South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, the latest reported rates are 35 percent, 26 percent and 32 percent, respectively – among the lowest in Africa. Even fewer hold birth certificates evidencing their registration. Birth registration does not grant nationality, but it is evidence of the elements that must be proven to show that a person is entitled to nationality. Without registration at birth, a person will often need to provide witnesses and other evidence of his or her situation, and is likely to undergo more onerous bureaucratic procedures before nationality is recognised. Civil registration systems become the more important as population mobility increases, and those most at risk of not being registered—the poor and marginalised; the nomadic; members of minority ethnic groups living in remote areas; migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers—are those most in need of proof of the facts of their birth so that they can establish a nationality. Section 2 of this report summarises the history of nationality law in EAC Partner States during the colonial period. Section 3 sets out the comparative provisions of nationality law today, and the gaps in the law that contribute to the risk of statelessness. Section 4 looks at nationality administration in practice today, including birth registration and issuance of national identity cards and naturalisation certificates, and identifies some of the major blockages. Section 5 describes the groups most at risk of statelessness common to all EAC countries, and identifies individual examples of such groups in each of the six Partner States. Section 6 outlines international and African standards on nationality and statelessness, and the jurisprudence of the African human rights institutions. Section 7 describes the EAC treaty regime relating to free movement, highlighting the absence of any framework to manage statelessness and recognition of nationality, while noting that EAC Partner States are also members of the ICGLR, which has recently adopted strengthened commitments to eradicate statelessness. Section 8 summarises high-level conclusions from the research for this report. A comprehensive set of recommendations is provided in section 9. 4 UNHCR / September 2018