REFUGEES FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION UNHCR, APRIL 2023 In some protracted refugee situations, a form of permanent residence status has been provided to refugees as a step towards eventual naturalisation (if that is desired). 53 Even though the immigration laws of the three countries allow in principle for a permanent residence status (see Annex 4 on national legal frameworks), these provisions are targeted at those making investments in the country, or working in the formal economy, and with a documented existing nationality. In practice, such a status is not accessible to refugees in any of the three countries surveyed; and the refugees surveyed generally preferred the maintenance of their existing status to a permanent residence option. In practice, naturalisation is very difficult to access in all three countries, thanks to procedural barriers. The most extreme case is DRC, where an onerous list of conditions applies, and only 22 naturalisations were granted between 1984 and 2020.54 In Rwanda, 935 people were granted Rwandan nationality between 2009 and 2020. 55 Access to Ugandan citizenship is somewhat easier: between July 2014 and June 2018, Uganda had registered 1,460 people as citizens, and naturalised 452 56 ; it is understood that a number of refugees married to Ugandans are included in these numbers. However, Uganda’s law has some very problematic features. The minor children of parents who register or naturalise as Ugandan citizens do not acquire citizenship through that process (and, as noted and analysed in greater detail in the Uganda section of Annex 4), those born after a parent has registered or naturalised are also not attributed citizenship at birth, creating obvious risks of statelessness. By contrast, both the Rwandan law and the Congolese law provide that minor children are automatically granted nationality if a parent is naturalised, in line with the general principle of law from the civil law tradition on “acquisition de la nationalité par effet collectif”. If acquisition of nationality (including through subsidiary acquisition of nationality for children of those who have naturalised or registered as nationals) were to become more widely available, this would be an important protection against statelessness for descendants of the person acquiring nationality. All three countries also provide for acquisition based on marriage, based on somewhat less onerous conditions than acquisition based on residence – in all three cases requiring a legally registered (civil) marriage, meaning that acquisition is dependent on the accessibility of civil registration services. Acquisition of nationality by children The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides that every child shall have the right to acquire a nationality (Article 7). This right is also contained in other human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (CMW), and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) prohibits discrimination based on sex in the transmission of nationality to children (and spouses); while the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) also contains provisions that restrict discrimination on racial or ethnic grounds in grant of nationality. As an important step to ensure that the right to nationality is respected in practice, Article 1 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness provides that a state shall grant nationality to a child born in its territory who would otherwise be stateless. Article 2 states that a child found in the territory shall 53 UNHCR’s 10-Point Plan of Action on Refugee Protection and Mixed Movements, Chapter 7: ‘Solutions for Refugees’, p.186. Among ICGLR Member States, this has been the case in Zambia, for example: see Annex 3, heading on permanent residence and other forms of long-term immigration status. 54 Information provided by the Ministry of Justice to the UNHCR Kinshasa office, May 2020, reported in Bronwen Manby, ‘Citizenship and Statelessness in the Member States of the Southern African Development Community’ (Geneva: UNHCR, 2020), https://www.refworld.org/docid/6012a0d44.html. 55 “Over 900 Got Rwandan Nationality Since 2009”, The New Times (Kigali), 5 October 2020. 56 See Bronwen Manby, ‘Citizenship and Statelessness in the East African Community’ (Geneva: UNHCR, November 2018), https://www.refworld.org/docid/5bee966d4.html. 16