CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE HORN OF AFRICA \Y national identity card has been in effect since independence and is the basis for voter registration.'%° Eritrea has not held national elections since independence in 1993. Somalia has held several elections since a federal government was re-established in 2004, but these have been based on an indirect voting system. The difficulty of agreeing who should vote in national elections — who is a Somali citizen with full rights — has been the main blockage to holding elections on the basis of universal demonstrate suffrage. In practice, agreement eligibility to vote, and the independent on a voter registration oversight of registration, system, the criteria to is likely to be the most important gateway for determining entitlement to Somali citizenship, until identification systems are fully established. The contested status of members of minority groups is central to this discussion and reveals their risk of statelessness (see further below, under the heading Minorities in Somalia, in the section on groups at risk of statelessness). Consular registration and assistance Access to consular services can be critical for the prevention of statelessness. It is important that the law requires consulates to provide the assistance place in another country are legally recognised necessary to ensure that civil status events taking in the country of origin. In Ethiopia, for example, the 2012 proclamation establishing vital registration system provides for Ethiopian missions abroad to serve as civil status offices.'®' Eritrean missions abroad, however, do not issue civil registry certificates — although it is reported to be possible to authorise, via the embassy, a person in Eritrea to apply for a certificate.'9* In Djibouti, the law provides that a birth outside the territory must be declared to the consulate within ten days, an obviously impractical obligation to impose, even with the possibility of extension of this period by presidential decree. '% However, the grant of legal authority to a consulate in civil status matters is not sufficient. It is usually the case that consular authorities only transcribe birth certificates issued by the state of birth, and will not register a birth directly, if not already registered by the host country. Consular assistance may, however, also be critical to enable this first step if parents need to produce documents from the country of origin in order to register a child’s birth in another country. These requirements are particularly difficult for refugees — who and risk losing refugee status if they do so (although UNHCR may fear to approach their embassy, advises that this should not be the case). The Refugee Convention therefore provides in Article 25 for a host country to issue “such documents or certifications as would 199 Décret normally be delivered to aliens by or through their national authorities”, and in N° 2016-019/PR/MI fixant les modalités d'établissement des listes électorales ainsi que les conditions de délivrance et de validité des cartes d'électeurs. 191 Registration of Vital Events and National Identity Card Proclamation No. 760/2012, art.7, as amended by Proclamation No. 1049/2017. 192 Country of Origin Report on Eritrea, Government of The Netherlands, February 2017 https://www.government.nl/documents/reports /201 7/02/06/countryof-origin-report-on-eritrea-february-2017. 193 toi n°003/AN/18/8eme L, , art.86: “En pays étranger, les déclarations aux agents diplomatiques ou aux consuls sont faites dans les dix jours de V'accouchement. Toutefois, ce délai peut étre prolongé dans certaines circonscriptions consulaires en vertu d’un décret du président de la République qui fixe la mesure et les conditions de cette prolongation.” 46 UNHCR — December 2021