SOLVING STATELESSNESS 3. Ensuring that today’s refugees are not tomorrow’s stateless: solutions in a refugee context Lucy Hovil 1. Introduction This chapter explores the nexus between displacement and statelessness. It argues that today’s refugees, particularly those in “protracted” situations of displacement,1 are in danger of becoming tomorrow’s stateless if deliberate action is not taken to resolve their plight; that those whose citizenship is questioned, whether directly in terms of their legal status or more broadly in terms of their belonging, are more vulnerable to displacement; and that displacement can be one of the mechanisms through which what was once a tenuous link with the State can be severed. It focuses specifically on the Great Lakes region2 of Africa where, with the exception of Tanzania, all the countries have generated refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in large numbers since independence. In addition, all have hosted refugees, many of whom remain exiled with no solutions in sight. While the issues discussed in this chapter are unique to the Great Lakes context, they also have broader application to other refugee crises on the continent and globally. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Global Campaign to End Statelessness provides a lens through which to view the refugee crisis in the region and beyond, both in emphasising 1 2 A protracted situation of displacement is considered by the UN to be any situation in which a person is displaced for more than five years. Thus, of the current 60 million refugees in the world today, 14 million are considered to be in a protracted situation. For an excellent article on this, see, B. Rawlence, The other refugee crisis, New York Times, 9 October 2015, http://www.nytimes. com/2015/10/10/opinion/the-other-refugee-crisis.html?_r=0. For the purposes of this chapter, the author includes the following countries within the Great Lakes region: Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Sudan, South Sudan and Kenya. Other definitions, including the definition of the International Conference of the Great Lakes region, also includes Zambia and Angola. 71