STATELESSNESS AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY were excluded from the right to vote or organise politically in the first elections held in Burundi, on the grounds that the Muslim population were foreigners.175 This group has not been subject to much research, but it is claimed that they continue to face difficulties in obtaining recognition as Burundian.176 Kenya In Kenya, unlike in Burundi, the constitutional framework governing the transition to independence provided a theoretically complete system for determining who among the residents of Kenya obtained citizenship automatically on succession of states or who had the right to register as citizens if certain facts were established. Those who automatically became citizens of Kenya at independence were people born in Kenya who had one parent also born in Kenya and who were at that time citizens of the UK and colonies or British protected persons. Others born or resident in Kenya, including those from non-British territories in Africa, could register as Kenyan under certain conditions.177 Many, however, did not apply to register: only around 20,000 people applied to register as Kenyan citizens during the transitional two-year period, most of them South Asian, out of an estimated 230,000 Asians and Europeans who would have been eligible.178 Very few African migrants applied, yet there had been much labour recruitment into Kenya, to work on the pyrethrum farms, tea estates, and other large commercial enterprises. These transitional provisions continue to have an important role in determining access to citizenship today, because of the decision in 1985 to adopt (with retroactive effect) a purely descent-based citizenship law.179 Despite the arguably illegal nature of such retroactivity, there was no legal challenge to the amendment, perhaps because interpretation of the law had already moved that way in practice.180 Many thousands of people today struggle to obtain documentation of Kenyan citizenship either because of the restrictive nature of citizenship law, or because of discrimination in its application.181 The special temporary procedures for naturalisation created by the 2011 Citizenship and Immigration Act for those tracing their ancestry in Kenya to before 1963 (see above, p. 19), were not initially accessible. As of mid-2016, just before the initial five-year deadline was to expire, no person had yet been registered as Kenyan as a result of the temporary provisions related to stateless persons, and only seven had been registered under the category of long-term migrants.182 While application forms were eventually made available on the Immigration Department website and at immigration offices, there had been no outreach to eligible groups, and as a consequence few who would appear to fulfil the criteria had applied. In late 2016, however, this situation changed, as the government took steps to register a group of descendants of 175 Case study in Geert Castryck, “The Hidden Agenda of Citizenship: African Citizenship in the Face of the Modern Nation-State”, in Steven G. Ellis, Guðmundur Hálfdanarson and Ann Katherine Isaacs (eds.) Citizenship in historical perspective, Pisa University Press, 2006. 176 Maître Mbongo Ali, Pour mieux connaître les Swahilis du Burundi et comprendre leurs revendications, Front de Liberation de la Minorité Swahilie du Burundi (FLSB), n.d. See also letter dated 23 March 2013 from the President of the National Assembly to the legal representative of the organisation Via-Volonté, and resources at: http://www.waswahiliburundi.org/ and http://www.viavolonte.org/index.html. 177 Constitution of Kenya 1963, Articles 1, 2, and 6; as supplemented by the Citizenship Act 1963. 178 The estimated 1965 population was 185,000 people of Asian descent, and 42,000 Europeans. Donald Rothschild, “Kenya’s minorities and the African crisis over citizenship”, Race & Class, Vol. 9, No. 4, 1968, pp. 421-437. Author was not able to find any figures on the population of African origin eligible to register. 179 Constitution of Kenya Amendment Act No. 6 of 1985. 180 See Ramnik Shah, “Britain and Kenya’s Citizenship Law: A Conflict of Laws?,“ Tolley’s Immigration & Nationality Law & Practice 6, No. 4 (1992): 120–25; Ramnik Shah, “Kenya’s Citizenship Laws Revisited“, Journal of Immigration Asylum and Nationality Law 26, No. 3 (2012): 269–77. 181 See footnote 108. 182 Interview, Director of Citizenship, Department of Immigration, 12 August 2016. UNHCR / September 2018 47