Realising the Child’s Right to a Nationality in South Africa after completing his Bachelor of Law. He was threatened with deportation, only staying in South Africa because there was no country to which he could be deported. During this process, he was not given any formal notice about decisions regarding his citizenship, nor was he provided with written reasons. He was left to guess why his identity number had been blocked. The Court intervened and found that such administrative practices were unjust and unconstitutional. Section 25 of the Citizenship Act grants such special statutory review powers to the High Court but is hampered by the fact that hardly anyone can afford legal intervention and, even then, applicants are delayed in obtaining a remedy due to the lack of written decisions and reasons.131 Even if the applicant’s citizenship is restored, they would have unnecessarily lost a significant number of years to statelessness. The South African Court’s finding is in line with the judgment by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Anudo, which found that the arbitrary denial of citizenship amounts to arbitrary deprivation of citizenship.132 The Court also found that the burden of proof in such cases falls on the state and not on the individual. The Court relied on arts 13 and 14 of the ICCPR, which guarantee due process.133 The same is provided for under art 7 of the Banjul Charter.134 The aforementioned cases demonstrate the crucially important role that administrative justice (due process) plays in enabling access to the right to nationality. Ideally, children should have access to an independent monitoring body that can automatically review citizenship denial or deprivation.135 Such a process should be free and child-friendly to enable maximum protection. Only once this process has failed should judicial review be considered. Excessive and unfettered discretion in nationality decisions is detrimental to the right to nationality and has increased the occurrence of statelessness in South Africa. The prevention and eradication of statelessness in South Africa cannot be achieved without just administrative action (due process) in nationality matters. A Does the Official Definition of Statelessness Include Those Who Are Without Nationality Because of Undue Process? The category of affected persons described in the previous part is not merely ‘persons of undetermined nationality’ (a sub-category of persons at risk of statelessness), as defined by UNHCR for statistical purposes.136 They are also not without a nationality simply because they have not attempted to acquire one. Instead, they have been deprived of their nationality arbitrarily after a series of attempts to access their lawful and determinable citizenship. They have long been ignored by international law, presumably because UNHCR is reluctant to classify them as stateless for fear of it resulting in massive portions of states’ populations becoming stateless instead of citizens.137 This might tempt countries of residence 131 132 133 134 135 Citizenship Act (n 24) s 25. Anudo v Tanzania (n 117). ibid 100, 111. Banjul Charter (n 2). See generally UN Human Rights Council, Impact of Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality on the Enjoyment of the Rights of Children Concerned, and Existing Laws and Practices on Accessibility for Children to Acquire Nationality, Inter Alia, of the Country in Which They Were Born, If They Would Otherwise be Stateless, UN Doc A/HRC/31/29 (16 December 2015) [42]–[47]. 136 UNHCR, Quick Guides: Researching Statelessness (Guidebook, March 2021) 56. 137 UNHCR Handbook (n 73) 58. 277