attempting to regularise their status, many have also suffered from corrupt practices by officials at the Registrar General's office charging extortionate regularisation fees of ZWL $5000.00 instead of the prescribed ZWL $40.75 Many are also not aware of their constitutional rights, and/or do not have the required documentation or funds to register. 47. As a result of these barriers to documentation, many descendants of migrants are still unlawfully designated as ‘Aliens’ on their IDs, their children have been designated as such on their birth certificates, and they have been deprived of citizenship rights such as the right to obtain travel documents and the right to vote. Issue V - Lack of adequate protection of stateless persons and statelessness determination procedures 48. Identifying stateless people in the country is a necessary first step to provide them a secure legal status, and protecting and ensuring their enjoyment of basic human rights. As mentioned, despite the ZHRC’s, Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Defence, Home Affairs and Security Services’ and the joint taskforce’s recommendations in their reports on access to documentation, there is still no dedicated statelessness determination procedures in place to identify stateless persons, to establish the extent of the stateless population in the country, and to fast-track and ease birth registration and citizenship application processes for those affected. The ZHRC’s National Inquiry Report found that lack of documentation impacts other rights such as right to education, access to health and social services, political rights, freedom of occupation, trade and profession, right to administrative justice and freedom of movement and residence, among others.76 Given the barriers that stateless people face in accessing their human rights, it is important to determine statelessness to ensure that laws and policies do not directly or indirectly discriminate against stateless people in the enjoyment of human rights. 49. Section 27 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe provides that the state must take all practical measures to promote compulsory basic education for children including higher and tertiary education.77 However, stateless children without birth certificates and IDs face challenges in accessing education, in terms of being unable to register for school, or register for public examinations, thereby limiting their prospects of future employment. While examination students are now being prioritised for issuance of identity cards, hundreds of secondary school students across the country failed to sit the Zimbabwe School Examination Council (ZIMSEC) examinations in December 2020 due to failure to obtain national identity cards. The lockdown and the failure to decentralise government powers had led to congestion of the Registrar’s office in Harare from students having to travel from other provinces to seek national IDs.78 In March 2021, the Parliamentary Committee of Defence’s fact-finding mission reported 75 Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission, Report on National Inquiry on Access to Documentation in Zimbabwe, (April 2020), section XV, available at: http://www.zhrc.org.zw/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/NI-Report-1.pdf. 76 Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission, Report on National Inquiry on Access to Documentation in Zimbabwe, (April 2020), available at: http://www.zhrc.org.zw/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/NI-Report-1.pdf. 77 Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment No. 20, Section 75. 78 Emmanuel Kafe, ‘Pupils in Zimsec nightmare’, the Sunday Mail, (December 2020), available at: https://www.sundaymail.co.zw/pupils-in-zimsec-nightmare. 12