Exploring the Interface Between Birth Registration and Citizenship Determination: A Scoping Study in Seven Countries in Southern Africa Mbabane, Eswatini. Photo Credit: Sopotnicki / Shutterstock.com Lesotho, Eswatini, Malawi, Botswana and South Africa all have interoperable civil registration and ID systems, some of which are based on data sets from previous ID databases. All these integrated systems have the ability to issue unique identity numbers from birth, created by the ID system, as per the guidance issued by the UN Legal Identity Agenda Taskforce.64 In some of these systems, the UIN character sequence is generated in the same manner for citizens and non-citizens, in line with international recommendations. In other systems, as in Eswatini, the character sequence of the UIN indicates whether the person is a citizen or a non-citizen. In others—such as Malawi—a UIN is issued only to citizens. In many countries, the ID card indicates if the holder is a citizen or non-citizen (see Figure 2). Thus, issuance of a UIN and entry in the ID system requires a citizenship determination. In Namibia there have been ongoing discussions internally in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration over the past 20 years on the intersection between birth registration and citizenship determination. According to the interview with Namibian officials, the practice of issuing Namibian and non-Namibian certificates was a practical solution, aimed to address constitutional questions, and inconsistent practices regarding citizenship determinations by birth by other public and private agencies at the time of application for service provision. Establishing clear legal processes for citizenship determination and safeguards for prevention of statelessness in the Civil Registration and Identification Act, 2024 rectified ambiguous practices, helping potentially thousands of children. As discussed above, the new safeguards include legal processes to defer citizenship for abandoned children and stateless children or children that otherwise would be stateless, and the right to appeal. In Botswana, the practice of intertwining the determination of citizenship and birth registration processes is considered to facilitate the right of every child to a citizenship and helps avoid situations where children are left stateless. It is, furthermore, seen to provide a process for fulfilling the country’s international obligations with respect to the child’s right to citizenship at birth. This is also seen to provide administrative efficiency by streamlining the process and recording all relevant information at once, ensuring clear legal identity for all children born in Botswana. 23