Tigranna Zakaryan “OPM has submitted a list of people [to Ministry of Internal Affairs] we believe to be eligible for naturalisation but championing this issue can be misconstrued and we need to be strategic with the timing…Elections and the economic dynamics of society play a role, but we need to be active or we will end up with stateless populations.”78 This reality demonstrates the contrast between Uganda's progressive refugee policies and its ability to fully integrate refugee communities and provide them with a sense of belonging in the long-term. 4.4 Birth Registration Uganda continues to face challenges in registering births and providing certificates to the entirety of its populations, the majority of whom reside in rural and remote communities. As of 2019, thirty-two percent of children under the age of five were registered at birth, while nineteen percent of children under the age of five have a birth certificate.79 These challenges are further exacerbated for its refugee and asylum seekers communities as Uganda continues to be the epicentre of forced displacement in the Great Lakes Region. In an attempt to acknowledge and address this reality through a broader framework, Uganda is a signatory to both international and regional treaties, which seek to uphold the rights of children with respect to ensuring their proper identification and preventing stateless, in addition to mirroring these initiatives in its own domestic legislation. In 1990, Uganda ratified the “Convention on the Rights of a Child” (CRC), which requires that “The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, [and] the right to acquire a nationality” (Article 7).80 The CRC further requires that “State Parties shall ensure the implementation of these rights in accordance with their national law and their obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field, in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless.” Regionally, Uganda is a party to the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.81Article 6 of the Charter notes that “(1) Every child shall have the right from birth to a name; (2) Every child shall be registered immediately after birth; (3) Every child has the right to acquire a nationality”. These provisions are reflected in Uganda’s domestic legislation, which states that “The State shall register every birth, marriage, and death occurring in Uganda” (1995 Constitution, Article 18). Uganda’s domestic framework is further supported by the Registration of Persons Act 2015, which upon its establishment of the NIRA, was designed to provide a national identification card and alien identification cards. The Act characterizes one of the key functions of NIRA as (b) “to register citizens of Uganda” (Article 5(b)) as well as “to register births and 78 Tigranna Zakaryan, Lina Antara, Political Participation of Refugees: The Case of South Sudanese and Congolese Refugees in Uganda. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, April 2018. https://www.idea.int/sites/default/files/publications/political-participation-of-refugees-the-case-of-southsudanese-and-congolese-refugees-in-uganda.pdf (accessed 08 December 2018). 79 UNICEF, Situation Analysis of Children in Uganda – 2019. July 2019. https://www.unicef.org/uganda/media/5181/file/Situation%20Analysis%20of%20Children%20in%20Uganda% 202019-FINAL.pdf (accessed 20 March 2020). 80 United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, Convention on the Rights of the Child. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx (accessed 08 February 2019). 81 African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. http://www.achpr.org/files/instruments/child/achpr_instr_charterchild_eng.pdf (accessed 10 February 2019). 18 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/8 - © 2020 Author