3. ENSURING THAT TODAY’S REFUGEES ARE NOT TOMORROW’S STATELESS: SOLUTIONS IN A REFUGEE CONTEXT the extent to which failures to belong within a polity are a root cause of displacement, and in exposing the fact that failures to resolve exile can lead to statelessness if not addressed. Throughout, the chapter places the legal phenomenon of statelessness within its broader socio-political context. In the Great Lakes region, as elsewhere in the world, legal principles are often in tension with social and legal understandings. Because the legal architecture in the region, as in much of Africa, is weak, social and political understandings are often more dominant in decision making than legal standards. In this context, it is argued, it is important to understand broader socio-political realities and to address social and political tensions in tandem with legal reform. 2. The interaction between displacement and statelessness The very existence of statelessness is the result of norms that are embedded in the notion of the State as a primary means of organising inclusion and exclusion within a polity. Yet in the Great Lakes region, the context in which discussions around the nexus between displacement and statelessness takes place is particularly challenging given the turbulent history and evolution of “citizenship” in the region. Concepts around belonging were irrevocably changed with the advent of colonialism, which demarcated State boundaries across the continent that defined a person’s relationship to the State and, perhaps more significantly, to a demarcated territory: the movement of people within specific areas now became labelled “cross-border”. It represented a defining moment in the development of notions of belonging, as borders defined the limits of inclusion and exclusion and limited the possibility of fluid forms of allegiance. It defined the jurisdiction of the State, re-defined the parameters of power,3 and regulated the movement of people.4 With the creation of national boundaries, anticolonial struggles were premised on the idea of national belonging within its current configuration, and nationalism as a liberation struggle against colonialism brought with it the identification of nation and State.5 In the aftermath of such struggles, the repatriation of those 3 4 5 A. Kraler, The State and Population Mobility in the Great Lakes, Sussex Migration 2004, Working Paper no. 4, p. 10. J. Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lesson in Authority and Control, Princeton University Press 2000, p. 227. T. Ranger and R. Werbner (eds), Postcolonial Identities in Africa, Zed Books 1996, p. 12. 72