2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) and prevention of statelessness in the Anudo Ochieng Anudo v Tanzania case. 131 Interestingly, the judgment did not rely on the precedents of the Commission that ‘a claim to citizenship or nationality as a legal status is protected under art 5 of the Charter’. Instead, it relied on universal principles such as art 15 of the UDHR and art 13 of ICCPR to rule that states must prove that a complainant does not have citizenship. Among other things the Court stressed that: [B]y declaring the Applicant an ‘illegal immigrant’ thereby denying him Tanzanian nationality, which he has, until then enjoyed, without the possibility of an appeal before a national court, the Respondent State violated his right to have his cause heard by a judge within the meaning of Article 7(1)(a), (b), and (c) of the ICCPR. 132 The Court further noted that the Tanzanian Citizenship Act contains gaps in as much as it does not allow citizens by birth to ‘exercise judicial remedy where their nationality is challenged as required by international law’. 133 It is the opinion of the Court that the respondent state has the obligation to fill the said gaps. The Anudo Ochieng Anudo v Tanzania case was also followed by that of Robert John Penessis v United Republic of Tanzania, the latter being the second case decided by the Court that considers the right to a nationality. Here, the Court affirmed its commitment to protection of the right to a nationality as per art 15 of the UDHR, in line with the reasoning in Anudo. 134 The Court drew on African Commission case law to state that the right to a nationality is implied within art 5 of the African Charter on the ‘right to the respect of the dignity inherent in a human being and to the recognition of his legal status’ and also affirmed views previously developed in its own decisions and those of the African Commission on the burden of proof in such cases. 135 There have also been cases of collective right to nationality and risk of statelessness in Africa decided outside the continent. In December 1973, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in East African Asians v the United Kingdom that the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act of the UK Government was discriminatory and deprived many East African Asians of their British nationality, which could result in statelessness. 136 Similarly, mass deprivation of nationality and the risk of statelessness have also been addressed by the case law of other regional human rights bodies such as the Inter-American Court. In September 2013, for instance, the Supreme Court of Dominican Republic stripped some 200,000 persons of Haitian descent of their Dominican nationality. 137 This led to the 2014 Case of Expelled Dominicans and Haitians v Dominican Republic, where the Inter-American Court explained that when regulating the granting of 131 Anudo Ochieng Anudo v Tanzania (Judgment) (African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, App No.012/2015, 22 March 2018). 132 ibid [115]. 133 ibid [116]. 134 Robert John Penessis v United Republic of Tanzania (Judgement) (African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, App No.013/2015, 28 November 2019 (‘Penessis v Tanzania’); see also Bronwen Manby and Clement Bernardo Mubanga, ‘Robert John Penessis v United Republic of Tanzania (Judgement) (African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, App No.013/2015, 28 November 2019)’ (2020) 2(1) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 172. 135 Penessis v Tanzania (n 134) [84]. 136 See East African Asians v United Kingdom (1973) 3 EHHR 76. 137 See TC/0168/13, 23 September 2013 (Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic). 56