Key Recomendations
1. Accede to the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954) and the
Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (1961).
2. Establish a National Action Plan (NAP) to end statelessness in South Africa.
3. Review and amend all legislation, regulations and policies relevant to access to
citizenship and birth registration to ensure their full conformity with the
Constitution and relevant international human rights law.
4. Publish and/or finalise regulations to give effect to section 2(2) of the Citizenship Act
which provides access to citizenship for stateless children and section 4(3) for
children born in South Africa to non-citizen parents.
5. Take further measures to reduce and ultimately eradicate existing cases of
statelessness, particularly among children, including through retroactive
implementation of safeguards to provide a nationality to stateless children born on
the territory, and through ensuring that the loss, deprivation or renunciation of the
parent’s nationality does not result in the deprivation of the child’s nationality.