Report on Citizenship Law: Mozambique individuals who migrated to neighbouring countries and failed to establish their citizenship in Mozambique upon their return or from abroad.6 The indeterminacy of their citizenship status is a source of vulnerability, leading to harassment by state officials and to obstacles in accessing basic rights, but the lack of primary documents is a wider problem affecting also those who never left the country and whose citizenship is in principle not disputed. The majority of the population in Mozambique is undocumented.7 In spite of the efforts made by Mozambican authorities over the past decade,8 birth registration rates are still below 50%, as admitted by the Minister of Justice Isaque Chande in 2018, during the presentation of a plan designed to ensure the birth registration of 1,4 million individuals within a four-year timeframe, to reach the goal of a 90% registration rate overall.9 Registration is mandatory and free of charge if made within 120 days of the birth and registration units have been established next to maternity hospitals across the country in recent years,10 but many births take place at home and a large part of the Mozambican population is still unaware of the importance of birth registration, since many manage to go about their daily lives without being impeded by lack of documentation. According to Sérgio Sueia, Director of the Civil Registry Department at the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional and Religious Affairs (Departamento do Registo Civil no Ministério da Justiça, Assuntos Constitucionais e Religiosos), many parents are reluctant to register their children due to the fees charged after the 120 days grace period and because the Civil Registry Office refuses to register ‘African names’, so children are often only registered if/when they are enrolled at 6 In 2009, the Mozambican authorities devised a plan to register Mozambicans in other countries in the region, estimating that around 45,000 persons of Mozambican origin without their citizenship recognized were then living in Malawi, 42,000 in Tanzania, 35,000 in Zimbabwe, 30,000 in Swaziland, 20,000 in Zambia and 1.2 million in South-Africa. An estimate of the potentially stateless persons living in Mozambique was (and continues to be) more difficult to make. Since 2009, there have been several missions by UNHCR and local NGO designed to map the cases of statelessness and risk of statelessness, focusing mostly on the bordering areas with Zimbabwe and South Africa, which has resulted in the identification of thousands of individuals at risk. See UNHCR Fact-sheet ‘Fighting Statelessness’, available at http://citizenshiprightsafrica.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/07/UNHCR-Mozambique-Statelessness-Project.pdf [26.04.2019]. It is worth noting that, in some instances, the Mozambican authorities are not directly to blame for the situation. That is the case e.g. with many of the descendants of Mozambican migrant workers in Kenya (circa 3,500, mainly from the Makonde ethnic group), who were contacted by the Mozambican consulate in Mombasa in order to register to vote in Mozambican elections, but who did not wish to hold Mozambican citizenship for fear that it would hinder their chances of obtaining Kenyan citizenship. Indeed, during the 2016 registration process of the Makonde population at risk of statelessness, the Kenyan authorities rejected applications by those who had Mozambican voter registration documents (Manby 2018a: 48). In any case, there are also instances where Mozambican authorities are to blame, even when their initiatives are well intended. For example, in 2015, the Mozambican immigration authorities travelled to Zanzibar to make documentation available on application, but the fees charged were too high for the majority of the target population to actually benefit from the initiative (Manby 2018a: 64-66). 7 See UNHCR Fact-sheet ‘Fighting Statelessness’, cit. 8 Which allowed for the registration of 7,959,816 children between 2009 and 2016. See Combined third and fourth periodic reports submitted by Mozambique under Article 44 of the Convention, due in 2016, CRC/C/MOZ/3-4, received on 28 March 2018, § 147, available at https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CRC%2fC%2fMOZ%2f34&Lang=en [08.05.2019]. 9 Information retrieved from news item entitled ‘Governo moçambicano quer atingir 1,4 milhões de registos de nascimento em quatro anos’, published on 9 May 2018, available at https://24.sapo.pt/noticias/internacional/artigo/governo-mocambicano-quer-atingir-1-4-milhoes-de-registos-denascimento-em-quatro-anos_24151870.html [29.04.2019]. 10 Two features commended by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in 2015. See Concluding Observations and Recommendations on the Second and Combined Periodic Report of the Republic of Mozambique on the Implementation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1999 – 2010), § 34, available at http://www.achpr.org/files/sessions/17th-eo/conc-obs/1-19992010/concluding_observations_mozambique.eng.pdf [29.04.2019]. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2019/6 - © 2019 Author 3