applications within a reasonable time105 or to exempt an individual person from a requirement of legal residence.106 More significant, perhaps, are cases that erode a State’s ability to refuse to recognise the nationality of people who appear, on their own account, to qualify under the law, but do not have the paperwork to prove it: those whose statelessness is manufactured through the imposition of the impossible evidentiary conditions highlighted by Neha Jain.107 There are innumerable national court cases instructing the executive to recognise the existing nationality of a particular individual under national law. There are also court orders of much wider significance, impacting many thousands of people otherwise left stateless: for example, judgments declaring members of the Urdu-speaking minority in Bangladesh to be citizens;108 confirming the citizenship rights of Ugandans of Somali origin;109 and ordering the Kenyan Government to recognise citizens ‘double registered’ as refugees.110 The AfComHPR and the ACERWC have adjudged that these ‘vetting’ procedures, such as those that exist in Kenya and impose additional administrative requirements to verify the status of residents of border regions or some urban neighbourhoods, will be considered arbitrary if they have no basis in primary legislation and discriminate on impermissible grounds. 111 All three African human rights institutions have held that, where the systems for the registration of births or for the delivery of related documents are weak, the burden of proof that a person without documents who claims nationality is in fact a national—or has the nationality of another State—must be shared between the person and the State.112 The AfComHPR has held that provisions of nationality laws will be invalid if they lack clear meaning.113 The ACERWC concluded that Sudan’s denial of nationality to a child born to a Sudanese mother and a father who would have acquired the nationality of the new State of South Sudan in 2011 constituted arbitrary deprivation.114 Building on these precedents, the Protocol to the African Charter on the Right to a Nationality, adopted in early 2024, established stronger due process principles than any previous treaty, including the reversal of the burden of proof where a person has ever held an official identity document recognising their nationality.115 This developing normative framework was, in turn, drawn on by UNHCR in the Guidelines on Statelessness later incorporated into the 2014 Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons (UNHCR Handbook), especially in relation to the determination of statelessness and a shared burden of proof; and in the subsequent Guidelines on Statelessness No 5 on Loss and Deprivation of Nationality adopted in 2020.116 Guidelines No 5 state firmly 105 Minister of Home Affairs v Jose and Another Case No 169/2020 [2020] ZASCA 152 (Supreme Court of Appeal, South Africa); Qureshi v Cabinet Secretary for Ministry of Interior and Co-ordination of National Government, Miscellaneous Civil Application 406 of 2018 [2019] KEHC 705 (KLR) (High Court of Kenya); SN v Cabinet Secretary for the Ministry of Interior, Miscellaneous Civil Application 406 of 2015 [2016] KEHC 8142 (KLR) (High Court of Kenya). 106 Swart v Minister of Home Affairs Case No 1 of 1997 [1997] NAHC 2 (High Court of Namibia). 107 Jain (n 5). 108 Reproduced in Namati and Council of Minorities, ‘Citizenship Rights of Urdu-Speaking Bangladeshis: The Milestone Judgements of the Bangladeshi High Court’ (2015); see also E Paulsen, ‘The Citizenship Status of the Urdu-Speakers/Biharis in Bangladesh’ (2006) 25 Refugee Survey Quarterly 54. 109 Abdu Abucar Hussein v Attorney General, Civil Suit No 437 of 2019 (Uganda High Court, 18 March 2022). 110 Haki na Sheria Initiative v Attorney General (2025) KEHC 221 (KLR) (High Court of Kenya) para 51. 111 Nubian Community v Kenya (n 50) [133]; Kenyan Nubian Children’s Case (n 46). 112 OSJI v Côte d’Ivoire (n 49) para 194; ACJPS & PLACE v Sudan (n 48) para 83; Anudo v Tanzania (n 42). 113 OSJI v Côte d’Ivoire (n 49) para 112ff; Mouvement ivoirien des droits humains (MIDH) v Côte d’Ivoire Communication No 246/02 (AfComHPR, 2008) para 86. 114 ACJPS & PLACE v Sudan (n 48) paras 42, 78. 115 Protocol to the African Charter on the Right to a Nationality (n 37) arts 12, 20. 116 UNHCR, ‘Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons under the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons’ (2014); UNHCR, ‘Guidelines on Statelessness No 5: Loss and Deprivation of Nationality under Articles 5–9 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness’ (2020).