CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 Colonial borders and gender discrimination combine to create barriers to birth registration and identity documents Grace Phiri is from a village near Chipata, North-eastern Province (bordering Malawi), she is a national of Zambia. She obtained a Zambian identity card in 2015 during mobile registration. Her husband Enock is from Malawi. They met and married in Zambia and their eldest son was born in 1991 in Zambia. They then moved to Malawi where eight additional children were born. They returned to Zambia in 2012. None of the children’s births have been registered in Malawi or Zambia. The eldest son married a Zambian woman, and they have three children born in Zambia. Another son also married in Zambia, to a Zambian woman who recently delivered their first child. In the absence of birth registration and documentary evidence establishing place of birth and parentage, traditional chiefs provide testimony to support one’s claim for birth registration and an identity card. But in the case of this family, the traditional chief will not provide any support documents. Because Enock Phiri is not a national of Zambia, the traditional chief considers that none of his children are nationals of Zambia, even though Grace Phiri is Zambian and according to the law her children are Zambian. In Ngoni tradition, children belong to the father. Case study from UNHCR Zambia bureau; names have been changed Safeguards against statelessness for children of unknown parents must be supported by procedures to ensure that the births of those children are registered, if they are to be effective and enable later access to citizenship documents. These procedures are not always in place, and there can be official resistance to ensuring that these children are registered in practice. In South Africa, despite provisions for the registration of abandoned children, it has been necessary for the courts to order the Department of Home Affairs to issue birth certificates to abandoned children, in the face of obstacles placed in the way of their registration.231 A number of states have made important efforts to improve the timely registration of births, especially for those births occurring in health facilities. In Namibia, birth registration facilities were scaled up in hospitals and sub-regional offices, resulting in a significant improvement in timely registration over the five years to 2012.232 In Angola, there has been a major effort to improve birth registration, although many barriers remain.233 Amongst other reforms, law on simplification of birth registration adopted in 2015 provides for health staff to ensure that birth registration takes place within 72 hours of birth in a health facility, and for efforts to improve registration of births at home also.234 Nonetheless, birth registration rates remain disappointing in southern Africa. In a mid-term update on the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals published in late 2019, UNICEF regretted that eastern and southern Africa had overall seen no significant progress in birth registration in the first two decades of 231 Births and Deaths Registration Act No.51 of 1992, as amended, sec. 12; “DHA finally gives abandoned child a birth certificate”, Lawyers for Human Rights, 24 July 2018; “Press Release: Abandoned Children Finally Registered by Home Affairs”, Lawyers for Human Rights and Abba Specialist Adoption and Social Services, 26 March 2019. 232 Matthew Dalling and Gopalan Balagopal, “A Rapid Overview of Birth Registration Systems in Namibia: Taking Stock” (Geneva: UNICEF and Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration, 2012), https://www.unicef.org/namibia/na.UNICEF_Birth_Registration_Field_Assessment_2012.pdf. 233 Michael Offermann, “Statelessness and risks of statelessness in Angola and for Angolans”, forthcoming report for UNHCR, draft June 2020. 234 Lei No.6/15 da 8 de Maio da Simplificação do Registo de Nascimento, arts.4 & 5. UNHCR / December, 2020 64