Statelessness in Southern Africa Recommendations A comprehensive set of recommendations on the content of nationality law, drafted with the input of leading nationality experts, is available in the report Citizenship Laws in Africa: A Comparative Study, published by the Open Society Foundations (2nd edition, 2010)133. The most important recommendations for countries in southern Africa to take immediate action to reduce statelessness would be: International treaties 1. States that have not yet done so should take immediate steps to accede to relevant treaties, in particular the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Law reform 2. In line with the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, to which all southern African states are parties, national constitutions and nationality laws should provide for an explicit and unqualified right to a nationality from birth for all children born on their territory who would otherwise be stateless. 3. National constitutions and nationality laws should not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or any similar category, and should not discriminate on the basis of marital status in relation to a parent’s right to pass nationality to a child. 4. The law should provide that a young child (foundling) found in the territory of the state shall, in the absence of proof to the contrary, be considered to have been born within that territory of parents possessing the nationality of that state. 5. The law should facilitate the naturalisation of stateless persons, relaxing the rules applied to them. 6. The law should protect against arbitrary denial and deprivation of nationality, providing for due process protections, including the right to seize a court, in relation to any administrative decision on nationality; and providing limited grounds for loss or deprivation of nationality that protect against statelessness. 7. Nationality laws and constitutions should be brought into line with each other and with the international treaties. Up-to-date regulations should provide the necessary details for the implementation of legal provisions in administrative decision-making. Birth registration and identity documentation 8. States should take all necessary measures to ensure that all children born in the country are registered at birth, without discrimination, including those children born in remote areas and in disadvantaged communities, as well as those in the country as refugees, stateless persons or migrants regardless of migratory status; and that children not registered at birth can be registered later during childhood or adulthood. These measures should include, for example, the use of mobile birth registration units, registration free of charge and flexible systems of proof where it is not reasonable to meet the standard requirements. Children whose births have not been registered should be allowed to access basic services, such as health care and education, while waiting to be properly registered. 9. States should take measures to strengthen their civil registry systems in general, in particular for the issue of identity cards, ensuring that services are accessible across the entire country, staff are trained, discrimination is minimised in administrative decision-making, and administrative and judicial review and appeal mechanisms are in place. 133 The full text is available here: http://www.soros.org/initiatives/justice/articles_publications/publications/citizenship_20091009. 32