THE COMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD 78th Pre-Sessional Working Group (02 – 06 October 2017) KINGDOM OF LESOTHO Civil Society Submission on the right of every child to acquire a nationality under Article 7 CRC 1 July 2017 Introduction 1. The SADC CRAI Network on Statelessness, represented by Lawyers for Human Rights, and the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion welcome the opportunity to make this submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child regarding The Kingdom of Lesotho’s compliance towards every child’s right to acquire a nationality under Article 7 of the CRC. 2. The SADC CRAI Network on Statelessness is the Southern African branch of the Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative (CRAI). The Citizenship Rights in Africa (CRAI) is dedicated to ending statelessness and the arbitrary denial of nationality in Africa.1 3. Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) is a South African human rights organisation committed to social justice activism and strategic public interest litigation. LHR is currently the coordinator of the SADC CRAI network. In 2011, LHR launched the Statelessness Project as part of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme. LHR provides direct legal services to stateless persons; engages government on the need for legal reform to prevent and reduce statelessness; raises awareness onthe rights of stateless people; and advocates for accession to the 1954 and 1961 UN statelessness conventions. LHR has reached more than 3,000 persons from over 28 countries of origin. LHR has identified numerous categories of stateless persons in the Republic, both migrants and those born in South Africa. 2 1 For more information visit http://citizenshiprightsafrica.org/ For more details of LHR’s statelessness project, see: http://www.lhr.org.za/programme/rmrp-statelessness-projectaccessing-citizenship-and-nationality . 2