CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 Commission found that lack of birth registration and other identity documents resulted in denial of numerous rights enumerated in the constitution. Among the rights impacted were the rights to citizenship; to freedom of movement; to vote; to access social welfare, or education; to practice a trade or profession; to hold property; to a fair trial and freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention; to freedom of association; to administrative justice; to equality and non-discrimination; to marry and to be protected against child marriage; and to human dignity. The report stated that “affected people suffer low self-esteem and loss of dignity. They lack a sense of their belonging to Zimbabwe and to their local communities. They feel that they are not equal human beings.”446 The Zimbabwe Parliament has also heard reports about the ways in which lack of access to primary documents deprived citizens of education beyond primary school. 447 Perhaps the most serious impact of statelessness – and lack of valid identity documents more generally – is the risk of arbitrary expulsion. Within the past decade both Tanzania and Angola have conducted operations to expel en masse large numbers of people alleged to be in the country with irregular status. The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights explicitly forbids such actions.448 Several tens of thousands of people were expelled during Tanzania’s “Operation Kimbunga” launched in September 2013. Among the concerns about the operations was that the arbitrary and discriminatory way in which people are identified as “foreigners” means that some of those expelled claimed to be citizens of Tanzania, and others were not accepted as nationals by the country to which they were expelled.449 In Angola, the artisanal mining industry has attracted large numbers of migrants from neighbouring DRC, and it is often unclear if an individual or family is Congolese or Angolan or both (or neither).450 The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has in the past condemned expulsions of these workers from the country.451 Nevertheless, during 2019 Angola once again expelled more than 43,000 people from Lunda Nord province, among whom 83% held no document of any kind, making their nationality uncertain. More than 6,000 of these were Congolese refugees or asylum seekers in Angola, or former Angolan refugees in DRC – and more than 2,000 claimed to be Angolan.452 446 Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission, 43–46. 447 Report on The Gwanda Community Youth Development Trust Petition on Access to Primary Documents, Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Defence, Home Affairs and Security, Zimbabwe, 27 August 2019. 448 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights Art. 12(5). 449 See for example, “Expelled immigrants stranded as ‘countries of origin’ deny their citizenship”, The East African, 21 September 2013; Legal and Human Rights Centre and Zanzibar Legal Services Centre, Tanzania Human Rights Report 2013, March 2014; and discussion in Manby, “Citizenship and Statelessness in the East African Community”. 450 Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali, “« Congolenses », « Congoleses », « Zairenses » : L’immigration centr-africaine et la problématique identitaire angolaise”, in Etre étranger et migrant en Afrique au XXe siècle: enjeux identitaires et modes d’insertion, ed. Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch et al., vol. 1 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), 189–206. 451 Communication No. 159/96, Union Interafricaine des Droits de l’Homme and Others v. Angola (1997); Communication 292/2004, Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa v. Angola (2008). 452 Michael Offermann, “Statelessness and risks of statelessness in Angola and for Angolans”, forthcoming report for UNHCR, draft June 2020; “Résultats du profilage des expulsés d’Angola au 28 juin 2019”, UNHCR République Démocratique du Congo, https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/70691. UNHCR / December, 2020 102