CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 Adjustments to borders can also have a problematic effect on the residents of the areas where the border has changed. This is most obvious where inter-state border disputes have reached the International Court of Justice: the best known case in Africa relates to the Bakassi peninsula, previously administered by Nigeria and awarded to Cameroon by the ICJ.381 In southern Africa, the ICJ has ruled on a dispute between Namibia and Botswana on the ownership of an island in the Chobe river forming the boundary between the two states along the southern border of the Caprivi Strip—itself one of the more ludicrous examples of colonialera border determination.382 The judgment acknowledged that the territory was occupied by members of the Masubia ethnic group originating from the Namibian side of the border, but this aspect was, according to the usual precedents, found by the majority to be irrelevant to the ultimate decision to award the island to Botswana. Less high-profile cases include a recent exercise to demarcate the border between Malawi and Zambia in 2018. Parts of Mchinji, Mzimba, Kasungu and Rumphi districts administered by Malawi were declared to belong to Zambia. The Malawian government urged the residents not to change their nationalities,383 but research for this report could not find out what arrangements would be made to enable them to opt and obtain the necessary paperwork to remain Malawian or become Zambian. Descendants of pre-independence migrants When sovereignty over a territory changes – as at independence in Africa, or on the dissolution of federations, or the separation of part of a state – the nationality status of people who moved within what was previously a zone of free movement is often problematic. Those placed at risk of statelessness by this process of “state succession” include the descendants of pre-independence migrants who were not recognised and documented as members of the new states. Other very long-term migrants may face similar problems. For these long-term settled migrants, it is particularly important that the state where they are resident provides the possibility of access to naturalisation without imposing procedural requirements that are impossible to fulfil. In addition, the law should provide for the right to nationality for persons born in the country at the latest if they are still resident there at majority. In neither case can acquisition of nationality be based on proof of legal residence, since by definition these long-term undocumented populations have no proof of identity on which to base an application for residence. Without these minimum rights, there is a risk of creating a large class of persons who are excluded from citizenship, even if they are living in the only country they have ever known and to which they have by far the strongest, or only, connections. In southern Africa, the risks of statelessness created at independence apply especially to the descendants of those hundreds of thousands of Africans who moved from a territory of origin, often under duress, as a result of the political and economic changes brought by colonisation. The best-known situations relate to the Banyarwanda of eastern DRC, and those who came to Zimbabwe (what was then Rhodesia) from Mozambique, Zambia or Malawi to work on farms or mines owned and operated by white Rhodesians. 381 Land and Maritime Boundary between Cameroon and Nigeria (Cameroon v. Nigeria: Equatorial Guinea intervening), ICJ Judgment of 10 October 2002. 382 Case concerning Kasikili/Sedudu Island (Botswana/Namibia), ICJ Judgment of 13 December 1999. 383 Wanga Gwede “Some Parts of Malawi Declared to Belong to Zambia: Minister Urges People not to Change Nationality”, Nyasa Times, 7 December 2018. UNHCR / December, 2020 90