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PROTOCOL TO THE AFRICAN CHARTER ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES’
RIGHTS RELATING TO THE SPECIFIC ASPECTS OF THE RIGHT TO A
NATIONALITY AND THE ERADICATION OF STATELESSNESS IN AFRICA
PREAMBLE
WE, HEADS OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT OF THE AFRICAN UNION:
CONSIDERING that Article 66 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’
Rights provides for special protocols or agreements, if necessary, to
supplement the provisions of the Charter;
DRAWING INSPIRATION from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of
1948, mentioned in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, of
which Article 15 provides that “everyone has the right to a nationality” and that
“no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his [or her] nationality nor denied the
right to change his [or her] nationality”;
MINDFUL that the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
and the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child provide
that every child has the right to acquire a nationality;
RECALLING the provisions of the 1990 African Charter on the Rights and
Welfare of the Child and the 2003 Protocol to the African Charter on Human
and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa;
RECALLING the commitment in the 50th Anniversary Solemn Declaration
adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African
Union on 26 May 2013 to realise the aspirations of the African people for an
African citizenship, in line with the Agenda 2063;
TAKING NOTE of the commitments made in the Abidjan Declaration of
Ministers of Member States of the Economic Committee of West African
States on the Eradication of Statelessness adopted in 2015, and the
Declaration of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region on the
Eradication of Statelessness adopted in 2017 to take all measures to
eradicate statelessness and to support the adoption by the African Union of a
Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the
eradication of statelessness in Africa;
RECOGNISING that the right to a nationality is a fundamental condition for
the protection and effective exercise of the full range of other human rights;
ALSO RECALLING the pioneering role played by the Regional Economic
Communities of the African Union in the development of new frameworks for
citizenship at the regional level as a means of accelerating the integration of
Africa’s peoples;
REAFFIRMING that States have the primary responsibility for the prevention
and eradication of statelessness and that in relation to nationality the