CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 Unaccompanied migrant children who were not born in the country where they now are may be at particular risk. A study by the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town of more than 300 children of foreign parents in South Africa in the care of Child and Youth Care Centres found that more than half were not accompanied by their parents when they entered South Africa, and one-third had no documents of any kind. Around 70 percent had been in South Africa for more than five years. Family tracing efforts, essential to their future rights to legal identity and a nationality, had been undertaken in less than a third of cases.370 The authorities of the country of origin equally often fail to provide adequate assistance in these cases (see above: Consular registration). No birth certificate; no rights; no citizenship Brian Ngwenya was born to Zimbabwean parents in South Africa 15 years ago, but he was forced to relocate to Zimbabwe after his father died and his mother developed a mental illness. Ngwenya said he had to come back home because his mother’s condition made difficult for her to take care of him. He was to live under the care of his maternal grandmother in rural Kezi, Matabeleland South. Ngwenya’s grandmother had to beg the headmaster at a local school to allow him to attend classes even though he did not have a birth certificate, one of the required documents when one enrols for formal education in the country. “My grandson will soon be taking his Grade 7 examinations and I am worried he will face challenges as he has no birth certificate,” she said. “Every time I go to the Registrar [General’s] offices I am told I have to bring his parents` documents and they also want Zim$50, which is too much for me.” Case study from: Nomaqhawe Ndlovu, “Matabeleland region hit hard by lack of access to identity documents”, Center for Innovation and Technology (CITE), Bulawayo, 21 March 2019 People of mixed parentage or dual nationality Especially in states where dual nationality is not permitted for adults, people with one national parent and one who is a foreigner may find on applying or renewing a citizenship document that they are required to renounce the nationality of the other country, even if they have never held sought recognition of the other state. Such requirements have been reported above all in Zimbabwe, where, from 2000, the Zimbabwean government applied ever stricter rules on the interpretation of a prohibition on dual nationality which existed under the laws in force at the time, with the effect of excluding from Zimbabwean citizenship anyone with a purported right to claim another nationality.371 While provisions of the 2013 Constitution should resolve the status of many of those affected, the Citizenship Act had yet to be updated by mid-2020 (see above: Dual 370 Lotte Manicom, “Foreign Children in Care: A Comparative Report of Foreign Children Placed in Child and Youth Care Centres in Gauteng, Limpopo and Western Cape Provinces of South Africa” (Cape Town: Scalabrini Centre, July 2019); see also Marilize Ackermann, “Unaccompanied and Separated Foreign Children in the Western Cape, South Africa: Exploring (the Lack of) Durable Solutions for Children in Informal Relations of Care” (Cape Town: Scalabrini Centre, September 2017). 371 Manby, Citizenship in Africa, chap. 7.1. UNHCR / December, 2020 87