The Role of Colonialism in Creating and Perpetuating Statelessness in Southern Africa and biometric.22 Paradoxically, these efforts are exposing more people to risk as most people learn their nationality is questioned while trying to access documents. Similarly, the push to document more people runs the risk of leaving undocumented people even further left behind. In some cases, people who were previously treated as citizens are being refused nationality documents.23 One of the most prominent causes of statelessness in Southern Africa is the lack of birth registration. While birth registration does not confer citizenship, all identity documents rely on proof of birth and nationality. It is impossible to claim nationality without a birth certificate. Identity documents are a fundamental feature of life and social and civic participation. In its General Comment on Article 6 on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child focuses specifically on the issues related to birth registration across Africa. It claims: “The right to birth registration is one of the rights that consistently appears not to be fully implemented by States parties.”24 It lists poverty, lack of education, gender discrimination, ethnic discrimination, or membership of a vulnerable group — such as refugees or irregular migrants — as common barriers to registration. A lack of decentralised, properly managed civil registrations also contributes. More than half of the children born in Africa are not registered at birth.25 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has noted that more than half of all children in the SADC region are still unregistered at age five. Birth certificates are not issued immediately in some regions and take weeks or months to be issued. In other cases, issuing birth certificates requires administrative processes or costs that are not accessible to all parents. Nationality deprivation and denationalising has seen a resurgence in recent years, primarily, ostensibly as a counter-terrorism or security tool.26 The focus on nationality has increased in the globalisation era, including in Southern Africa. As absolute migration continues to grow, it has become an increasingly important tool for classifying people, and citizenship is increasingly being used as a migration management tool. United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that damaging forms of nationalism and anti-migrant and anti-refugee sentiments are at risk of driving statelessness upwards.27 Citizenship deprivation World Bank ‘Identification for Development (ID4D) 2018 Annual Report’ World Bank Group (2018), available at https://id4d.worldbank.org/sites/id4d.worldbank.org/files/2018_ID4D_Annual_Report.pdf 23 Manby op cit note 6. 24 African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) ‘General comment on Article 6 on the rights and welfare of the child’ (2014), available at https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/62899 25 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ‘Crisis of invisibility in Sub-Saharan Africa: Less than 1 in 2 births registered’ Press release (07 December 2017), available at https://www.unicef.org/wca/press-releases/crisis-invisibility-sub-saharanafrica-less-1-2-births-registered 26 Global Citizenship Observatory (EUI) & the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI) ‘Instrumentalising citizenship in the fight against terrorism’ (March 2022), available at https://files.institutesi.org/Instrumentalising_Citizenship_ Global_Trends_Report.pdf 27 United Nations (UN) ‘“Dangerous nationalism” seriously threatens efforts to tackle statelessness: UNHCR chief ’ UN News (7 October 2019), available at https://news. un.org/en/story/2019/10/1048722 22 81