SOLVING STATELESSNESS Consequently, the discourse of displacement inevitably highlights and emphasises national identity – or lack thereof – at all stages in the trajectory of displacement. As a root cause, notions of inclusion and exclusion have often been the cause of the violence that has led to displacement: people have been violently forced from their homes on the basis of their membership of a particular group or as a result of their presence in a specific territory – or both. Whether or not they were legally statelessness prior to flight, their exclusion from the polity has often been a key component to their reasons for flight. Once in exile, the rights and protection that should be attached to citizenship are effectively denied to refugees, particularly those who have found themselves in “protracted” situations. Unable to assert citizenship rights in their home country, as evidenced by their inability to return home, yet with little prospect of attaining a new citizenship, tens of thousands have had their lives put on hold. While refugees typically retain their nationality of origin, and therefore are not stateless, the line between a protracted situation of exile and statelessness can be extremely blurred. For instance, although in theory nationality can be passed from parents to children in refugee contexts, children born in exile inevitably move one step further away from their parent’s original citizenship – whether by law (for instance through the loss of documentation, or through laws that render nationality acquired through inheritance of lesser value than that acquired through (jus soli), or in practice (for instance through lack of political recognition of their nationality) – leaving them acutely vulnerable to being stateless. For instance, many Burundian refugees born in Tanzania felt unable to return to Burundi as they did not know where their ancestral land was. They will often not have taken positive steps to ensure that their parent’s citizenship is asserted in practice, by ensuring access to appropriate documentation, etc. and critical documents for establishing their nationality, such as their parents’ IDs, may have been destroyed in flight. And yet, throughout the region, citizenship policies exclude them from accessing citizenship automatically on the basis of birth in the territory (jus soli). Indeed, throughout the region, only Tanzania allows citizenship on this basis in law, and even there this legal provision is generally not respected in practice. Their access may be further impeded by a lack of adequate systems in place to register births in situations of displacement, lack of options for naturalisation and other elements that place them at considerable risk of encountering problems when and if they seek to claim citizenship. 75