CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE HORN OF AFRICA \% Eritrea Eritrean citizens over the age of 18 must obtain a national department both responsible for immigration. parents and of the grandfather identity card, issued by the government In addition to completing a form with details of the names and great-grandfather, an applicant must also provide of three witnesses who already have an identity card.'5? Despite the gender-neutral nationality law, paternal descent thus appears Eritrean women to be emphasised for acquisition of a national identity document; children of and refugee fathers also struggle to be recognised as nationals.'®° Other supporting documents include a letter from the local administration, a birth certificate, and, as proof of Eritrean citizenship, the identity cards of a parent or three witness statements. '®' In 2014, it was announced that the paper identity card issued since the independence referendum would be replaced; however, few of the new cards were issued and there is a long backlog of applications, meaning that the old paper-based documents are still in use.'®* There is no information on why the issue of identity documents was terminated or when are, however, frequent. it may be resumed. Identity cards and Checkpoints on roads and roundups laissez-passer documents issued by various in towns military and civilian authorities are inspected by military police, with the principal purpose of verifying the holder’s completion of or exemption from military service obligations.'® Eritrea introduced machine-readable, non-biometric passports Eritrean national ID (for adults) and also a birth certificate. in 2010, issued on the basis of an The fee for issue of a passport for those eligible was US$200 at the Washington DC embassy at the time of writing this report.'®* Those who have not fulfilled their military service obligations cannot obtain a passport or leave the country. '® Those in the diaspora cannot obtain a passport unless they have paid a 2 percent tax levied on all nationals resident outside the country.'® Ethiopia In principle, the only responsible agency for recognition or grant of Ethiopian citizenship is INVEA. In practice, the identity document of most importance has since the Derg era been the local level “kebele ID” (for an explanation of the kebeles, see above, Ethiopia’s federal constitution). Every neighbourhood 459 Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Eritrea: Procedures to obtain an identity card; whether a person born in Asmara who left Eritrea before independence in 1991 can obtain an identity card; if so, the procedures for doing so, 12 September 2000, ERT35413.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/3df4be2e4.html ; English version of the application form available at the website of the Eritrean consulate in Australia http-//ericon.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/|D-Checklist. pdf. 160 Information from UNHCR Asmara office, May 2021. 161 Country of Origin Report on Eritrea, Government of The Netherlands, February 2017 https://www.government.ni/documents/reports/2017/02/06/countryof-origin-report-on-eritrea-february-2017. 162 Reciprocity and Civil Documents by Country: Eritrea, US State Department, n.d. (last accessed 22 March 2021) https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/usvisas/Visa-Reciprocity-and-Civil-Documents-by-Country/Eritrea.html. 163 David Bozzini, ‘Low-Tech Surveillance and the Despotic State in Eritrea’, Surveillance and Society 9, no. 1/2 (2011): 93-113, https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v9i1/2.4102. 164 Embassy of Eritrea, Washington DC, Consular Services: Passport. https://us.embassyeritrea.org/passport/. 165 Bozzini, ‘Low-Tech Surveillance and the Despotic State in Eritrea’. 166 ‘The 2% Tax for Eritreans in the diaspora: Facts, figures and experiences in seven European Countries’, DSP-groep BV & Tilburg School of Humanities, June 2017 https://www.dsp-groep.eu/projecten/the-2-pct-tax-for-eritreans-in-the-diaspora/. 42 UNHCR — December 2021