Report on Citizenship Law: Nigeria 5.6 Action against statelessness Nigeria is a party to all the relevant international and African instruments relating to the right to nationality; and in 2011 it acceded to the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.80 Despite being the first State in the West Africa sub-region to accede to the 1954 and 61 Conventions,81 Nigeria has yet to domesticate the Conventions to give them the force of law in Nigeria.82 At regional level, Nigeria has participated in the adoption by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) of the Abidjan Declaration on the Eradication of Statelessness, committing ‘to prevent and reduce statelessness by reforming constitutional, legislative and institutional regimes related to nationality.’83 In 2017 ECOWAS ministers meeting in Banjul followed up this Declaration by adopting a Regional Plan of Action to Eradicate Statelessness in West Africa. Under this plan of action, ECOWAS has stated that: ECOWAS, in collaboration with UNHCR and the competent institutions of the African Union, will assist Member States by adopting common standards that will guide the reform of nationality legislation of West African States, including inter alia the removal of discriminatory provisions in the transmission of nationality and the inclusion of safeguards against statelessness to ensure that every child acquires a nationality at birth.84 The Plan of Action also noted the ‘urgent need to obtain more concrete information about the sources of statelessness and the obstacles to acquisition of nationality as well as potential ‘at risk’ groups’.85 At national level, the Government of Nigeria, with support of UNHCR and other relevant stakeholders, worked to draft a National Plan of Action to end statelessness in Nigeria in 2016, updated in 2018. As the time of writing this report, the Plan of Action is yet to be approved by the Federal Executive Council to make it an official policy of the Government. At the UNHCR High-Level Segment on Statelessness held in Geneva in October 2019, Nigeria pledged to develop a determination procedure to identify stateless persons, grant protection status and facilitate appropriate solutions.86 80 Ratification status for UN human rights treaties at http://indicators.ohchr.org/; for the statelessness conventions at https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ParticipationStatus.aspx?clang=_en; and for the African Union at https://au.int/en/treaties. 81 UNHCR, Acceding to the UN Statelessness Conventions. Ending Statelessness within 10 Years - Good Practices Paper Action 9, p.8. 82 Nigeria is a dualist State, as such, foreign treaties or international laws must first be received through an Act of the National Assembly before they are binding in Nigeria. 83 Abidjan Declaration of Ministers of ECOWAS Member States on the Eradication of Statelessness, 15 February 2015; endorsed by the Communique of the 47th Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Heads of State, 19 May 2015. 84 Banjul Plan of Action of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on the Eradication of Statelessness 2017 – 2024, 9 May 2017, Preamble, and Strategic Objective 1.3. 85 Ibid., Strategic Objective 2. 86 See UNHCR, Results of the High-Level Segment on Statelessness. Accessed 14/05/2020 via https://www.unhcr.org/ibelong/results-of-the-high-level-segment-on-statelessness/. 22 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/12- © 2020 Author(s)