Cassadee Orinthia YAN International Comparative Jurisprudence. 2024, 10(1):94-111. highlight the urgent need for comprehensive legislative changes to address statelessness and ensure stateless individuals’ protection and social inclusion. Making progress requires coordinated effort at the international, regional, and national levels. Thus, the article focuses on how the existing laws in Kenya and South Africa discriminatively and exclusively contribute to statelessness, and in what ways they differ or are similar in their contribution. 1. Historical and theoretical background Citizenship legislation has been shaped by historical, social, and political factors, and significant changes have been made to accommodate evolving notions of identity, belonging, and rights. Everyone possesses the right to choose their nationality, and the freedom to choose, alter, and keep one’s nationality is implicit. States do not hold an absolute right to determine citizenship within their borders; they are bound by human rights obligations when granting or revoking citizenship. Discrimination based on minority status, religion or belief, age, gender identity or expression, disability, language, race, ethnicity, sex, sex traits, or sexual orientation is one of the leading causes of statelessness (Peden, 2021; Petersen, 2019; Kochovski, 2013; Lyapina, 2019; Akstinienė, 2017). More than three quarters of the projected global stateless population consists of members of minority groups, and the hardships currently faced by these groups are exacerbated by statelessness. Inaccessibility and limitations in the acquisition, alteration, or retention of nationality and the passing of nationality to one’s children may all be sources of discrimination for women from disadvantaged backgrounds (Lopez Oggier, 2022; Peden, 2021). While granting citizenship is crucial for ensuring the equal enjoyment of human rights and freedoms, it is not a panacea for the stigma and prejudice that stateless people endure. In the lead-up to the October 2021 Roundtable on Equality and Non-Discrimination in Nationality Matters to End Statelessness, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UNHCR ‘undertook a stocktaking on national laws, policies and practices in this area’ (UNHCR, n.d.-b). The situation of the Rohingya in Myanmar serves as an example of statelessness resulting from discriminatory citizenship rules. Parashar and Alam (2019) assert that the systematic religious discrimination against the minority Rohingya in the national laws of Myanmar has contributed to the formation of statelessness. The plight of the Rohingya demonstrates how citizenship rules may be exploited to prolong ethnic-based exclusion and statelessness via legal procedures such as the 1982 Citizenship Law, which denied them citizenship and subjected them to persecution (Ahsan Ullah, 2016; Kyaw, 2017). This example also shows how citizenship rules can be altered to exclude specific racial, religious, or political groups, further underscoring the potential for discriminatory practices within citizenship frameworks. The concept of birthright citizenship finds its roots in ancient civilizations. As Ramsey (2020, p. 3) explains, birthright citizenship originates in the Roman legal doctrine, where it was known as jus soli, or the ‘right of the soil’. Other civilizations later embraced this concept, including medieval England, where children born within its borders were considered English subjects. The emergence of nation-states in the 18th and 19th centuries brought significant changes to the concept of citizenship. The French Revolution was influential in popularizing citizenship as a fundamental right, emphasizing equality and universality over birthplace or social status (Siegelberg, 2020). However, while citizenship was expanding in specific ways, exclusionary citizenship rules also surfaced. Birthright citizenship is the subject of ongoing legal interpretation and debate in the U.S. The concept of birthright citizenship was established by the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, enacted in 1868 (Ramsey, 2020, p. 5). According to the amendment, ‘All persons born … in the United States, …, are citizens of the United States’. 96