document that cannot be challenged at moments when conclusive proof of nationality is required for official purposes. Since the document is delivered by a tribunal the decision is made by a person who has been trained in the law, and is tied to a fundamental standard of due process, which creates a basis for challenge of any decision. Of course, there are problems in practice. Judges cannot overcome weaknesses in the law itself; and interpretations of the law may sometimes vary across different tribunals. It can be very cumbersome to prove all the elements required to obtain recognition of nationality. The relevant tribunal is usually located at the capital of a department or region, and may be quite remote from the areas where many people live. Administrative staff may be unhelpful, and there is substantial triage before cases reach the tribunal president, as those collecting the applications send people back who do not have the correct supporting paperwork. Outside any tribunal or other office for nationality papers will be a queue of people waiting to speak to someone to sort out their case; some of them have been returning to the same spot multiple times over several months. Applicants may have to spend many hours sorting out irregularities in their birth certificates or other documents; for example, where names on different official documents do not conform to each other in spelling (an illiterate person may be completely unaware of the significance for legal authorities of the difference between Mohamad and Mohammed). Intermediaries who assist these people may levy substantial unofficial fees. Statistics for certificates issued are not published, but the numbers obtained from the handful of tribunals visited for this study were well below what you would expect if most people were to have proof of nationality. For example, in Ziguinchor, capital of a department in the region of Casamance in Senegal, the departmental tribunal issued 1,895 certificates of nationality in 2013; at the tribunal de grande instance in Niamey, capital of Niger (a city with a population of a million or more), 21,692 certificates of nationality were issued from October 2012 to September 2013. By contrast, in the Commonwealth countries, although there may be the theoretical provision for a certificate of nationality in cases of doubt, this is delivered by the executive, and is effectively unknown in practice.103 Thus, there is no single document that provides conclusive proof of nationality: while the passport has highest status, most people do not have an international passport. In practice, a variety of documents may be accepted as proof of nationality, depending on the circumstances. In Nigeria, for example, the law establishes no document or process that conclusively proves nationality. Constitutional provisions referring to membership of an “indigenous community” in relation to the nationality of those born before independence (see above, section 2.6.3), reinforced by the legal framework of federalism, have created a strong emphasis on “indigeneity” that pervades identification systems and that impacts both internal migrants and those who have come from other countries. The principle of “federal character” introduced in 1979 is based on the idea that government positions at different levels should be shared equitably among those who are “indigenes” 103 For example, the Ghana Citizenship Act 2000, provides in its Section 20 that: “The Minister may, on an application made by or on behalf of any person with respect to whose citizenship of Ghana a doubt exists under Part I of this Act, certify that the person is a citizen of Ghana and a certificate issued under this section shall be prima facie evidence that the person was such a citizen at the date indicated in the certificate, but without prejudice to any evidence that he was such a citizen at an earlier date.” There is a similar provision in Section 14 of the Gambia Nationality and Citizenship Act, 1965, and in Section 24 of the Sierra Leone Citizenship Act 1973; but not in Nigeria. 36