CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 ceased circumstances clause has been invoked for refugees from Mozambique in 1996,412 from Namibia’s Caprivi Strip in 2002,413 from Angola in 2012,414 and Rwanda in 2013.415 When this happens, UNHCR facilitates a tripartite agreement with the host and sending countries, and the return of refugees, or the regularisation of their status in host countries for those who preferred to remain. Naturalisations of former refugees remain rare (with the exception of the naturalisation of Burundians in Tanzania; see above: Naturalisation or recovery of nationality by long-term refugees and their descendants). While the laws of many countries in principle allow for the naturalisation of refugees and stateless persons on the same or similar terms as other foreigners (see above: Acquisition of nationality by naturalisation or registration), naturalisation can be very difficult to access in practice. Their children born in the country of refuge are at very high risk of statelessness, unless there are effective rights to acquire nationality based on birth in the territory. Refugees from Mozambique’s civil war still remain in neighbouring countries, and 3,000 living in long-term camps in Malawi are still awaiting repatriation.416 In other countries, however, the Mozambicans were not encamped, and the refugees are often hard to distinguish from other migrants. Mozambique supplied many thousands of workers to South Africa during the apartheid era, and to Tanzania and Kenya while they were under British rule. While the newly democratic South African government that took office in 1994 provided a series of amnesties by which migrant workers and refugees could obtain permanent residence in South Africa many remain without citizenship417; in Tanzania many regarded themselves as having become Tanzanian citizens by the public pronouncements of President Julius Nyerere, their current status is not certain.418 In 2011, UNHCR identified a group of several hundred people of Mozambican origin “returned” from Zimbabwe who were stateless, with neither nationality recognised, and launched a project to assist the Mozambican authorities in an exercise to identify and provide documentation to Mozambican migrants and their children in South Africa and other neighbouring countries.419 Former Angolan refugees in South Africa have struggled to secure anything more than short-term residence permits. Approximately 3,000 registered Angolan refugees were living in South Africa on cessation of their refugee status in April 2013 (out of more than 16,000 total Angolans in the country).420 Many had been 412 UNHCR, Applicability of the Cessation Clauses to Refugees from the Republics of Malawi and Mozambique, 31 December 1996, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/4165775d4.html. 413 Delphine Marie, “UNHCR starts repatriating Namibian refugees in Botswana”, UNHCR, 13 August 2002. 414 UNHCR, Implementation of the Comprehensive Strategy for the Angolan Refugee Situation, including UNHCR's recommendations on the applicability of the "ceased circumstances" cessation clauses, 15 January 2012, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/4f3395972.html. 415 The Rwandan decision was controversial. See: “Implementation of the Comprehensive Strategy for the Rwandan Refugee Situation, including UNHCR's recommendations on the Applicability of the ‘ceased circumstances’ Cessation Clauses”, UNHCR, 31 December 2011; Rwanda: Cessation of Refugee Status is Unwarranted: Memorandum of Fact and Law, FAHAMU, 22 September 2011; Barbara Harrell-Bond and Guillaume Cliche-Rivard, “Rwandan refugees face no choice but repatriation”, OpenDemocracy.Net. 10 May 2012; “No consensus on implementation of cessation clause for Rwandan refugees” IRIN, 12 July 2013. See also, Lindsey N Kingston, “Bringing Rwandan Refugees “Home”: The Cessation Clause, Statelessness, and Forced Repatriation”, International Journal of Refugee Law 29, no. 3 (2017): 417–37, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijrl/eex030. 416 UNHCR country page on Malawi, https://www.unhcr.org/uk/malawi.html (as last updated 18 June 2018; accessed 21 January 2020). 417 Manby, Citizenship in Africa, chap. 9.3. See also above: Naturalisation or recovery of nationality by long-term refugees and their descendants. 418 Manby, “Citizenship and Statelessness in the East African Community”; Manby, Citizenship in Africa, chap. 7.3 & 9.3. 419 UNHCR, “Fighting Statelessness: Findings in Mozambique”, 2011. 420 Sergio Carciotto, “Angolan Refugees in South Africa: Alternatives to Permanent Repatriation?”, African Human Mobility Review 2, no. 1 (2016): 362– 82. UNHCR / December, 2020 97