6.3. Nationality laws in West Africa are ill-adapted to the reality of migration Many thousands of people in West Africa live in a country that is not the one where they were born, and many millions more in a country that is not the one where their parents were born. Most of them have their origins in another West African country; many have established new lives and intend to remain indefinitely in the “new” country, which may be the country of their birth. Despite this, it is very difficult to acquire the nationality of another country as an adult; and a number of West African countries provide almost no possibility for the descendants of migrants to obtain the nationality of the country that is their home. Although all West African countries provide in theory for a person to apply to acquire nationality as an adult, the procedures established by law for naturalisation render it ineffective for all but a small elite. In all ECOWAS countries, the inaccessible and highly discretionary process of naturalisation makes it exceedingly difficult to obtain recognition of membership in the state where a person lives and has the closest connections if it is not their country “of origin”. The nature of free movement within the ECOWAS (and UEMOA) space – in which few have residence permits, even though they are theoretically required -- means that it is paradoxically easier for non-West Africans to naturalise in a West African state than for the national of another West African state to do so. Naturalisation has become a mistrusted process, believed (accurately or not) to be granted only to cronies of the president or persons with the means to buy it. Countries which provide very limited rights based on birth in the country — in particular, that provide no access to nationality for those born in the country and resident during their childhood (enabling automatic or optional access to nationality at majority) — risk creating large populations of people whose nationality is doubtful or who are stateless. Where this lack of rights based on birth in the territory is at its most acute (in Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, and Nigeria), or racially discriminatory (Liberia and Sierra Leone) it can be near-impossible for the children of immigrants to become nationals and be integrated into the national community if they do not belong to an “indigenous” ethnic group. Even if those in this situation may have a theoretical access to the nationality of one or other of their parents, such a nationality may be inaccessible in practice as those connections become steadily weaker; or useless to them, if their lives and identity are established where they now live. Those countries that provide for double jus soli (attributing nationality to a person born in the country of one parent also born there), such as Senegal or Niger, at least prevent this situation carrying on through more than one generation; but those born in the country of parents who themselves migrated form a missing generation, without the nationality of the country where they have the strongest links. While the rules on possession d’état de national (the presumption that a person is a national if they seem to be so) in many civil law countries in principle provide a guard against statelessness for such children, especially useful where birth registration rates are low, the implicit or explicit discrimination in what it means to be “treated as a national” may exclude those who are visually or by other marker distinguished from the majority population of the country concerned. Nationality law in most countries in the world is also very poorly adapted to provide for those who do not live a settled existence. There are no definitions of “habitual” or “ordinary” residence allowing for habitual residence in more than one place (in case of naturalisation or state succession; but also at national level for voter registration and other events); and laws mainly based on location of birth may not be so relevant to those who consistently move about. West Africa is one of the regions of the 91