STATELESSNESS AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE EAST AFRICAN COMMUNITY A note on terminology: “nationality”, “citizenship”, and “stateless person” In international law, nationality and citizenship are now used as synonyms, to describe a particular legal relationship between the state and the individual; the terms can be used interchangeably, though “nationality” is more commonly used in international treaties. Neither term has any connotation of ethnic or racial content, but is simply the status that gives a person certain rights and obligations in relation to a particular state. Other disciplines, such as political science or sociology, have different ways of using the terms in other contexts. And even in law, different languages have different nuances, and different legal traditions have different usages at national level. In national law, “citizenship” is the term used by lawyers in the British common law tradition to describe this legal bond, and the rules adopted at the country level by which it is decided whether a person does or does not have the right to legal membership of that state and the status of a person who is a member. Nationality can be used in the same sense, but tends to be more restricted to international law contexts. In the French and Belgian civil law tradition, meanwhile, nationalité is the term used at both international and national levels to describe the legal bond between a person and a political entity, and the rules for membership of the community. This report will use citizenship and nationality according to the terms used in the national context, and nationality at the international level. The 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons provides the international definition of “stateless person”: “a person who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law” (Article 1(1)). (In its discussions around the development of a protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Specific Aspects of the Right to a Nationality and the Eradication of Statelessness in Africa, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights proposed clarifying this definition to confirm that the definition includes a person who is unable to establish a nationality in practice.) UNHCR / September 2018 iii