Statelessness Determination Procedures International Court of Justice. 5 It also includes the Almajiri, ie, children sent to study Islamic education with Islamic scholars right from their childhood and with no records of birth, 6 undocumented nomads who move from one place or country to another, 7 internally displaced persons and border populations with no means of identification. 8 For the identification of the normative framework, we draw the relevant standards from international law, the practice of states and practices recommended by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (‘UNHCR’). Pertinent UNHCR documents include in particular the UNHCR Global Action Plan to End Statelessness 2014–2024, 9 the resultant UNHCR Good Practice Papers on protection, identification, and prevention of statelessness, 10 and guidelines offered by the UNHCR Handbook on the Protection of Stateless Persons (‘UNHCR Statelessness Handbook’). 11 These standards could roughly be divided into the following categories: protection, avoidance and identification. 12 In terms of structure, this article sets out to define the concept of SDP (Part II), map international standards that may guide states in establishing an SDP and develop criteria through which the practices in states with existing procedures can be assessed (Part III). Subsequently, these standards and criteria are applied to the situation in Nigeria (Part IV). STATELESSNESS DETERMINATION PROCEDURES: DEFINITION AND PURPOSE An SDP could be defined as a procedure, whether administrative or judicial, meant to determine whether or not a person or a population is considered as national of any state under the operation of its law, 13 with a view to finding durable solutions 5 6 7 8 9 See Land and Maritime Boundary between Cameroon and Nigeria (Cameroon v Nigeria: Equatorial Guinea Intervening) (Judgment) [2002] ICJ Rep 303. Bronwen Manby, Nationality, Migration and Statelessness in West Africa — A Study for UNHCR and IOM (Report, June 2015) 78. ibid 70. Nigeria Situation 2017 (Supplementary Appeal, UNHCR July 2017) 8. Global Action Plan to End Statelessness 2014–2024 (UNHCR 2014) <https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/protection/statelessness/54621bf49/global-action-plan-endstatelessness-2014-2024.html> (‘UNHCR Global Action Plan’). The ten Global Action Points agreed with state parties are: Action 1: Resolve existing major situations of statelessness. Action 2: Ensure that no child is born stateless. Action 3: Remove gender discrimination from nationality laws. Action 4: Prevent denial, loss or deprivation of nationality on discriminatory grounds. Action 5: Prevent statelessness in cases of State succession. Action 6: Grant protection status to stateless migrants and facilitate their naturalisation. Action 7: Ensure birth registration for the prevention of statelessness. Action 8: Issue nationality documentation to those with entitlement to it. Action 9: Accede to the UN statelessness conventions. Action 10: Improve quantitative and qualitative data on stateless populations. 10 UNHCR, Ending Statelessness (Global Appeal 2016–17, 1 December 2015). 11 ‘[I]n 2015 UNHCR launched a series of good practice papers, each of which corresponds to one of the 10 Actions in the Global Action Plan [to end statelessness by 2024]. Each paper highlights examples of how States, UNHCR and other stakeholders have addressed statelessness in a number of countries’: See also ‘Statelessness’, Refworld (Web Page) <https://www.refworld.org/statelessness.html>. Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons under the 1954 Convention on Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (UNHCR 2014) (‘Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons’). Katja Swider and Maarten den Heijer, ‘Why Union Law Can and Should Protect Stateless Persons’ (2017) 19 European Journal of Migration and Law 101, 106. See Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, opened for signature 28 September 1954, 360 UNTS 117 (entered into force 6 June 1960) art 1 (‘1954 Convention’). 12 13 88