CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE HORN OF AFRICA \Y Discrimination between men and women in transmission of nationality to children is often a cause of statelessness, especially where the child is born in the territory of the mother’s nationality and not the father; this discrimination is exacerbated where there are also distinctions based on birth in or outside a formally registered marriage. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, national origin, or race similarly creates high risks of statelessness, especially where this discrimination is encoded in law. Statelessness is also caused by failures in administrative systems to ensure that a legal right to a nationality can be claimed in practice. This includes a lack of universal birth registration, weaknesses of civil registration more generally, and the absence of child protection systems to ensure that all children have a documented identity, family connections, and nationality. Even in states with more complete coverage of birth registration, parents without identity documents are often unable to register the births of their children, while single parents commonly determination of eligibility for identity documents registration are weak or have inadequate face discrimination. These problems in turn affect issued to adults. Where systems of identification and independent oversight, many people who are entitled to nationality under the law may be unable to get recognition of that nationality in practice. Although the achievement of universal birth registration reforms to nationality laws, strengthened is not a complete solution without the necessary parallel civil registration is a critical part of the effort to prevent and reduce statelessness. Finally, statelessness in Africa has roots in the colonial history of the continent: the arbitrary delineation of borders which divided many ethnic groups between two or more countries, the forced movement of populations, and the discriminatory systems to document identity. These are exacerbated by the challenges created by more recent conflict and forced displacement, by the determination of the citizen body for more recently established states, and by management of migration more generally. International and African standards Minimum standards for the content of nationality laws are established by the UN human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women as well as the Convention Reduction of Statelessness. (CEDAW), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the UNHCR has published a Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons, and guidelines on prevention of childhood statelessness and on loss and deprivation of nationality, that — together with the views and comments of the treaty bodies — provide authoritative interpretation of the obligations under these treaties. In addition, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child provides in its Article 6 for the right to a nationality; Article 6(4) specifically provides (in line with Article 1 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness) that a child shall acquire the nationality of the state of birth if he or she is not granted nationality by any other state. The Committee of Experts responsible for oversight of the treaty has adopted a General Comment providing guidance on states’ obligations under this article. The African Committee of Experts, as well as the African Commission and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, have considered many communications that relate directly or indirectly to the right to a nationality and the prevention of statelessness. The African Commission also initiated a process to draft 2 UNHCR — December 2021