UNHCR, APRIL 2023 REFUGEES FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION 1. Summary This study investigated risks of statelessness among long-term refugees in three countries of the Great Lakes region in Africa: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda. The study focused on refugees who had left their country of origin more than twenty years ago – defined as “long-term” refugees for the purposes of the study – and their descendants born in the country of asylum.1 The populations considered in this report are refugees of Rwandan origin in DRC, refugees of Congolese origin in Rwanda, and refugees of Congolese and South Sudanese origin in Uganda. The study involved both an analysis of laws and policies in all the countries studied, including the countries of origin of the refugees, and quantitative and qualitative research among refugees and host communities. The objective was to understand in greater depth the risk of statelessness among these long-term refugees and their descendants, and potential durable solutions that mitigate this risk. In the context of stateless persons, whether or not they are also refugees, a durable solution is linked to the recognition or granting of a nationality. Among these solutions, the study considers the improvement of access to civil registration and other identity documents, as well as the legal pathways to local integration in the country of asylum, including the possibility of acquiring nationality. The study found that the vast majority of these long-term refugees had no identity documents of any kind issued by their country of origin. The only official identification recording their nationality is therefore their refugee registration document (issued by the authority of country of asylum, often with UNHCR support). Most adult refugees have no birth certificates, essential for proof of connection of parent and child on the basis of which nationality might be claimed. Among those born in the country of origin, only 8 percent of the adult long-term refugees surveyed for this report had a birth certificate. Although birth registration has improved significantly for children of refugees born in the country of asylum in recent years and is nearing complete coverage in Rwanda (including for those born in the country who are now adults), only 28 percent of adult refugees born in Uganda, and 6 percent of adults born in DRC held a birth certificate. Unsurprisingly, a majority of the refugees surveyed stated that their preferred solution to end their refugee status started with resettlement in a third country. Yet, when asked which country they felt closest to, more than 62 percent named the country of asylum (rising to 70 percent of those living in urban areas), and almost half stated that their preferred solution would be to remain in th at country. Although only a minority (12 percent of the total) said that they wished to acquire the nationality of the country of asylum, focus groups indicated that the implications and possibilities of changing legal status were not fully understood, and that this percentage might well increase if the options were easier to access and with greater awareness of the processes. In practice, it is hard for any applicant to acquire nationality based on long-term residence in any of the three countries of asylum, because of the legal and procedural barriers. Although acquisition of nationality based on marriage is relatively more accessible, UNHCR is only aware of a small handful of successful applications by long-term refugees to acquire nationality in Uganda or Rwanda, in most cases based on marriage to a national, and none in DRC. One reason for wishing to retain refugee status (22 percent of all those surveyed) is that s o long as refugee status is viewed as indefinite and refugee identity documents are renewable the status functions as a form of permanent residence in the host country. Refugee status provides the legal residence permit and identity documents that refugees need to access services and facilitate freedom of movement in the country of asylum, as well as receive entitlements to some (limited) humanitarian assistance from UNHCR and partners and the host government. However, refugee status is not intended to be permanent, and is thus precarious over the long term. In the case of refugees who fled the events in Rwanda between 1959 1 A list of terminology used in this report is provided at Annex 1. 1