Report on Citizenship Law: Mozambique entered into force on 21 January 2005 following the validation of the results of the 2004 general election.74 The 2004 Constitution is said to have been scarcely innovative vis-à-vis the 1990 Constitution (Gouveia 2017: 238). Its preamble seems to confirm this, since it refers to the 1990 Constitution as having introduced democracy and the rule of law, and to the 2004 Constitution as merely ‘reaffirming, developing and deepening’ the fundamental principles of the Mozambican state, i.e. sovereignty, democracy, rule of law, pluralism, party system and respect for citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms. The changes introduced to the citizenship regime were, however, quite extensive and significant, with the acceptance of dual citizenship, the establishment of gender neutral rules for acquisition of citizenship by marriage, and the elimination of involuntary deprivation as grounds for loss. The 2004 Constitution also streamlined the categories of ‘citizenship by origin’ and ‘acquired citizenship’, finally making citizenship by origin synonymous with citizenship by birth and moving all other cases to the now broader category of acquired citizenship, in line with the common practice among Lusophone countries. The full extent of the regime will be detailed in the next section. As a closing note on the political and constitutional evolution of Mozambique so far, it should be mentioned that violence was resumed by RENAMO in 2012 and that the country was again engulfed in armed conflict in 2014 following RENAMO’s rejection of that year’s electoral results. Afonso Dhlakama’s main demand was that RENAMO be allowed to appoint the governors of the provinces where it had won the majority of the vote, a demand which was rejected by the FRELIMO majority in parliament with the argument that it had no legal basis, since the 2004 Constitution only provided for the election of provincial assemblies, not provincial governors (Macuacua 2019c: 2; Macamo 2017: 202-203). Peace talks between RENAMO and the government started in 2015. In December 2017, the President Filipe Nyusi decided to engage directly with Afonso Dhlakama and the agreement they reached resulted in a sui generis constitutional amendment (Macuacua 2019c: 2-3), presented orally to the nation on 7 February 2018 and subsequently endorsed by the National Assembly with the adoption of Law no. 1/2018, of 12 June 2018. The next elections are scheduled to take place on 15 October 2019 and, for the first time, Mozambicans will not only elect the President of the Republic and the MPs, but also the governors of the country’s eleven provinces, who are no longer appointed by the central government. introduce them immediately as a minor amendment. Law no. 9/98, of 9 December 1998. Published in Rodrigues et al. (2006: 209-210). 74 Information available from the website of the Mozambican Constitutional Council, at http://www.cconstitucional.org.mz/Legislacao/Constituicao-da-Republica [14. 04.2019]. Although the 2004 Constitution introduced special guarantees to preserve its text against frequent amendments (Articles 299-304), it has already been amended twice, first by Law no. 26/2007, of 16 November 2007, secondly by Law no. 1/2018, of 12 June 2018. None of the amendments made changes to the citizenship provisions. All versions of the 2004 Constitution are available at http://www.cconstitucional.org.mz/Legislacao/Constituicao-da-Republica [28.03.2019]. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2019/6 - © 2019 Author 23