Tigranna Zakaryan a. The case of the Maragoli community Several ethnic communities have complained of their exclusion from Ugandan citizenship under the Third Schedule of the 1995 constitutional provisions defining indigeneity. Among the various groups who face this reality, the Maragoli community living within Uganda's Bunyoro Kingdom is are a key example. The Maragoli community are a part of the broader Luhya ethnic community found in Kenya. According to the Maragoli community, their migration history into Ugandan dates back to the 19th century or earlier. Their community in Uganda is known to have grown during the 20th century when the Maragoli arrived to support the construction of the Uganda Railway. In 1957, the king of the Bunyoro Kingdom extended an invitation for members of the Maragoli community to settle in his home region of western Uganda and allocated them land.39 Though the Bunyoro community spans from western to central Uganda, and the Maragoli community is concentrated in Uganda’s central, Kiryandongo District. The Maragoli are not included in the 1995 Uganda Constitution under the Third Schedule identifying indigenous communities, nor are they included in the 2005 Amendments. In 1999 they formed the Maragoli Community Association as a response to their exclusion from being officially recognized among Uganda’s other indigenous communities and as a means to advocate for both the citizenship as well as socioeconomic inclusion of their members.40 In 2014/15 Uganda began a mass registration exercise in order to introduce national IDs (see below). This process led to the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) withholding national IDs of the Maragoli community on the basis on them not meeting the indigeneity requirements as listed in the Third Schedule, and thus, claiming that they are not entitled to citizenship. Through continuous lobbying efforts, the Maragoli were offered citizenship by naturalisation during Uganda’s mass registration process under the National Security Information System (NSIS) project. 41 For the Maragoli however, the prospect of attaining citizenship through naturalisation would mean that they would have to prove having resided in Uganda for twenty years, and further, would not be able to transmit citizenship to their children (on the basis on the naturalisation laws as described above). Hence, the Uganda government’s offer did not present a plausible solution. In 2014, the Maragoli community petitioned the Ugandan Parliament to be included under the Constitution and to be acknowledged as an indigenous community under the Third Schedule. They appeared before the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of the Ugandan Parliament in order to present their case and requested an Amendment to the Constitution to recognize their citizenship. As a result of this effort, the Committee recommended the establishment of a Constitutional Review Commission to review the prospect of their inclusion in the Constitution. In 2018, four years following the initial petition, preliminary nominations to the commission were made.42 39 Bronwen Manby, Statelessness and Citizenship in the East African Community, United Nations High Commission for Refugees, 2018. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/documents/download/66807 (accessed 18 December 2018). 40 The International Refugee Rights Initiative, A Quest for Citizenship: the Maragoli, 23 January 2019. http://refugee-rights.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Quest-for-Citizenship-Maragoli-1-1.pdf (accessed 08 February 2019). 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 12 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2020/8 - © 2020 Author