CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS
IN THE HORN OF AFRICA
\Y
Table 2: The right to a nationality based on birth in the country
Country
Birthin
country
Birth &
one
parent
also born
Birthand
iexsy(olV al
at
majority
Child
Parents
otherwise — stateless
stateless
or of
unknown
nationality
Abandoned
infant (ai) or
parents
unknown (pu)
Relevant legal
provision
(most recent
amendment in
brackets)
pu
pu
al
L2018Art31
L1992Art2
L2003Art3
Djibouti
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Somalia
pu
L1962Art15
This table includes blank columns, to indicate the potential rights to acquire nationality based on birth in the territory
that are provided for in other African states (See Bronwen Manby, Citizenship Law in Africa: A Comparative Study,
Open Society Foundations 3 edition, 2016).
Adopted children
If a nationality law does not provide for an adopted child to acquire nationality from its adoptive parents,
that child may be at high risk of statelessness. This is of course especially the case if the child is adopted
from a foreign country or if the child’s birth parents are or were of unknown
nationality. However,
the
lack of such a provision may also place a child who is in principle already a national at risk, if there is no
mechanism to establish the legal connection to the adoptive parents (known as filiation in the civil law
systems), so that the adopted child acquires the same rights as any other child would do.
Both Ethiopia and Eritrea provide for a foreign child adopted by a national to have the right to apply for
citizenship,
and
the
law
does
not
specify
additional
conditions
(other
than
release
from
previous
nationality in the case of Ethiopia).
Djibouti’s 2004 nationality law specified that adoption had no effect in itself on nationality; however, this
was changed at the incorporation of the nationality code into the civil code of 2018, and the legal act of
plenary adoption by a national now itself attributes Djibouti nationality to the child.
The civil code makes
a distinction between plenary adoption (in which contacts with a birth family cease) and simple adoption
(in which the adopted person retains rights in his or her original family).
Neither the 1962 Law on Somali Citizenship (nor the 2002 Somaliland Citizenship Law) contain any
mention of adoption.
Islamic Sharia law has not traditionally permitted full adoption, recognising instead the system akin to
guardianship known as kafala, under which a person (kafee/) undertakes responsibility for the protection,
upbringing and care of a child, in the same way as a parent would do for his or her own
child — but
without breaking the child’s legal links with his or her birth family.”° The system of kafala is recognised
by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of
75 Loi n°003/AN/18/8eme L portant Code Civil, Titre IX : De Ia filiation adoptive, arts.435-472.
76 Usang M Assim and Julia Sloth-Nielsen, ‘Islamic Kafalah as an Alternative Care Option for Children Deprived of a Family Environment’, African Human Rights
Law Journal 14, no. 2 (2014): 322-45.
UNHCR
— December 2021
23