1. BACKGROUND It is estimated that at least 10 million people are stateless worldwide, while many more are at risk of statelessness. 1 A stateless person is defined as someone who is not considered a citizen by any State under the operation of its law. Statelessness has dire personal consequences, as it most often affects an individual’s political, civil, socio and economic rights. Some children are born or become stateless because their parents are stateless, others because of discriminatory citizenship laws, abandonment, or difficulties proving their relationship to a state due to lack of documentation, such as birth certificates. 2 Action 7: Ensure Birth Registration for Prevention of Statelessness Source: UNHCR Global Action Plan to end statelessness Universal birth registration is critical for preventing statelessness because a birth certificate is a crucial form of proof to confirm or acquire citizenship under a state’s domestic legislation. Key information to assert a child’s right to a nationality is the place of birth and the parental details. 3 In Southern Africa, dysfunctional and, in some cases, exclusionary civil registration systems are a primary cause of statelessness.4 Ensuring specific legal safeguards in the civil registration laws in the region is therefore vital to prevent statelessness. Civil Registration law should provide clear pathways for the registration of children despite life circumstances, although it does not always guarantee the acquisition of citizenship for all children. 4 Children of long-term refugees can be at high risk of statelessness. New research on refugees and statelessness in the Great Lake region concludes that children of long-term refugees are at risk of statelessness because their parents are undocumented. Although children have birth certificates, the process of applying for citizenship by descent is cumbersome and expensive.5 Action 7 of the UNHCR’s Global Action Plan to End Statelessness calls on States to ensure birth registration to prevent statelessness. 5 The objective of Action 7 is that by 2024 no cases of 1 https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/statelessness-around-the-world/ UNHCR, What is the Statelessness? https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/wp-content/uploads/UNHCR-Statelessness2pager-ENG.pdf 2 UNHCR Global Action Plan to End Statelessness, 2014 -2024 https://www.unhcr.org/ceu/wpcontent/uploads/sites/17/2016/12/End-Statelessness-GlobalActionPlan-2019-Final-web.pdf 3 Some children become stateless despite having a birth certificate because they lack other elements of proof required under the nationality determination procedures, or discriminatory citizenship laws. 4 2