STATELESSNESS AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY with the petitioner’s own application for Kenyan citizenship by registration.200 In July 2016, the High Court threatened to hold the Immigration Service in contempt of court for failure to comply with this order: Bhangra’s application for citizenship had by then been outstanding for 12 years, and no update was available on this case at the time of publication.201 In principle, both the BOCs and their children should be able to register as Kenyan citizens. Those who themselves hold BOC status are eligible under the normal provisions of Kenyan law for registration as citizens on the basis of long term residence. Both the parents and the children would in addition be eligible under the special registration provisions of the 2011 Citizenship and Immigration Control Act for migrants and stateless persons resident in Kenya since 1963. In practice, accessing these special procedures has been next to impossible, without major advocacy efforts: as noted above, only seven people had been registered under the special procedures for “migrants” as of mid-2016, with no updated figures available at the time of publication. There are others who never obtained confirmation of BOC status, yet who also did not register as Kenyan during the post-independence period. The Asian community in Kenya does not get much political sympathy, being stereotypically regarded as wealthy and exploitative, lacking real loyalty to Kenya and holding onto citizenship documents from India or Britain—though some Kenyan Asians are stateless and poor, poverty being both a consequence and a cause of statelessness.202 Most have no connection to any other country that would entitle them to citizenship there, and Kenya is their home: indeed, in 2017 President Kenyatta issued a “Presidential Proclamation” that Kenyans of Asian Heritage were recognised as Kenya’s “44th tribe”.203 200 Kulraj Singh Bhangra v Director General, Kenya Citizens and Foreign Nationals Management Service, High Court of Nairobi, Petition No. 137, 5 December 2014. 201 Abiud Ochieng, “‘Stateless’ man to be granted Kenyan citizenship”, The Nation (Nairobi), 17 July 2016. 202 Some may have a theoretical right to apply for citizenship in the UK. This is extremely difficult to access. It also requires the person to obtain proof that they do not have Kenyan citizenship; which, given that for most people Kenyan citizenship is what they seek, is likely to be in parallel with an application to obtain registration as a Kenyan citizen. 203 Kenya: Presidential Proclamation: In the Matter of the Petitions by the Asian Community for Formal Recognition as a Tribe in Kenya, Gazette Notice No. 7245, Kenya Gazette, Vol. CXIX—No. 102, 21 July 2017. Kenya is traditionally regarded as having 42 tribes, based on census categories employed in the colonial period (see Samantha Balaton-Chrimes, “Counting as Citizens: Recognition of the Nubians in the 2009 Kenyan Census”, Ethnopolitics, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2011, pp. 205-218); the Makonde were informally stated to be the 43rd tribe at the time of their registration. It is not clear what legal status the Presidential Proclamation has: see Zarina Patel and Jill Ghai, “A tribe, a nation, a people – or just Kenyans?” The Star (Nairobi), 14 August 2017. UNHCR / September 2018 51