CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 in 1994.12 Conflict in Central Africa and the Horn of Africa has also displaced many millions of people at different times, and many have become refugees in SADC states (see below: Groups at Risk of Statelessness: Refugees, former refugees and returnees). Environmental damage is an increasing driver of migration, as droughts and cyclones have left destruction in several southern African states in recent years. South Africa is the most significant destination country for migrants in Africa, with around 4 million international migrants residing in the country. In 2005, international migrants comprised 2.8 per cent of South Africa’s population; by 2019, this figure had risen to 7 per cent; the majority of these migrants are from neighbouring countries, which historically provided labour for farms and mines.13 Transition to independence and initial frameworks of law The transfer of sovereignty over territory – known as state succession – is well-known for creating risks of statelessness for those whose nationality is not clearly established at that time, whether resident in the territory but with origins in another state, or resident outside the territory with origins within the state. These risks have led the International Law Commission to adopt detailed guidance on the rules that should be applied (see below: The right to a nationality in international law). The transfer of sovereignty in Africa in the 1960s and 70s from the colonial powers to the newly independent states is no exception.14 In states where the law applicable to those born after independence gave and continued to give strong rights based on birth in the territory, the transitional provisions at independence or lack of them – gradually lost their importance. However, where the post-independence law was or became based exclusively on descent, the failure to provide protections against statelessness in transitional rules created the origins of many stateless populations today (see below: Groups at risk of statelessness). The new states adopted nationality laws largely based on models from the various colonial powers. In the former British protectorates, the rules to be applied were directly negotiated with the British government and included in the independence constitutions.15 The new constitutions of Botswana, Eswatini, Malawi, Mauritius, and Tanzania provided for automatic attribution of citizenship at independence to (most) people born in the territory if one parent was also born there; in Lesotho, Seychelles, and Zambia there was no requirement for one parent also to have been born there. There were special temporary provisions for those born or resident in the country, but who did not qualify for automatic attribution, to be able to register as citizens within a two-year period after independence. For the most part, these rules created a theoretically water-tight protection against statelessness. In practice, difficulties in proving location of birth and in accessing the temporary registration provisions left many with uncertain status. All the Commonwealth states provided for jus soli attribution of citizenship after independence, by which citizenship is automatically acquired based on birth in the territory, reflecting the 12 12 Jonathan Crush and Vincent Williams, “Labour Migration Trends and Policies in Southern Africa”, SAMP Policy Brief (Waterloo, ON, Canada; Cape Town, South Africa: Southern Africa Migration Programme, March 2010); Jonathan Crush and Abel Chikanda, “Forced Migration in Southern Africa”, in The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, ed. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al. (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 13 IOM, “World Migration Report 2020” (Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2019), chap. 3, https://publications.iom.int/books/worldmigration-report-2020. 14 For more detail, see Manby, Citizenship in Africa, chap. 4; Elspeth Guild, “British Nationality and East African Independence”, Immigration and Nationality Law and Practice 4, no. 3 (1990): 99–102. 15 For the detail, see Laurie Fransman, Adrian Berry, and Alison Harvey, Fransman’s British Nationality Law, 3rd ed. (London: Bloomsbury Professional, 2011) country catalogue entries. UNHCR / December, 2020