CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 from 100 percent registration claimed in Mauritius, to only 11 percent in Zambia. Six of the 16 SADC countries have birth registration rates of less than 50% of those under five years old, while the percentage holding birth certificates is generally lower. Older children and adults generally have even lower rates of registration. If the parents of a child are not nationals of the country of birth, access to consular services may be essential for that child’s right to the parent’s nationality to be assured; including through issue of identity documents to the parents and transcription of the birth certificate into the records of the state of origin. Yet the fees and other difficulties in accessing such consular services put them out of reach for many. The extent of the problem of statelessness is, paradoxically, in some ways being revealed by recent efforts to strengthen administrative systems and ensure universal birth registration and access to identity documents. Many people are only now finding, as registration processes are implemented for upgraded or newly instituted national identity cards, that they are in fact not considered as nationals of these countries. Appeal and review processes are often weak, meaning that many of those not recognised are in fact nationals under the law, but cannot get recognition in practice. Civil registration systems become more important as population mobility increases, and those most at risk of not being registered—the poor and marginalised; the nomadic; members of minority ethnic groups living in remote areas; undocumented migrants; refugees and asylum-seekers—are those most in need of proof of the facts of their birth so that they can establish a nationality. Child protection systems to ensure late registration of birth and engagement with the relevant administrative processes for reocgnition of nationality are also essential – but weak or absent. Regional cooperation and efforts to reduce statelessness The SADC Treaty of 1992 establishes that SADC and its Member states shall act in accordance with principles that include respect for human rights; its objectives include the strengthening of “the longstanding historical, social and cultural affinities and links among the people of the Region”. SADC has yet to adopt any binding commitments at ministerial or head of state level for the resolution of statelessness, although they would clearly be required by these principles and objectives. However, the states of the SADC region have already taken some important steps towards ensuring respect for the right to a nationality. These include the progress towards gender equality in transmission of citizenship, which now leaves only Eswatini and Tanzania with discriminatory provisions; the naturalisation of long-term refugees, especially in Tanzania; and reforms introduced to provide protections against statelessness for children born in the territory and those of unknown parents, including, in recent years, Eswatini, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The SADC Migration Dialogue for Southern Africa (MIDSA), which convenes Member States to discuss migration governance, has adopted recommendations that included ratification and domestication of the African and international treaties on the rights of the child, strengthening birth registration and national identification systems, gender equality in transmission of nationality, and work towards the development and adoption of a SADC Ministerial Declaration and Action Plan on Statelessness. A draft plan was proposed at state expert level in December 2018 and submitted by the SADC Secretariat to its Public Security Sub- 6 UNHCR / December, 2020