1. Summary
Statelessness is a problem of significant but unknown magnitude in West Africa. It is not possible to
say how many people are stateless in the sub-region; but it is certain that many hundreds of thousands
of people are at risk of statelessness. That is, there is a possibility or probability that they are “not
considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law”. This study seeks to show why
this is important, both for the rights of the individuals affected and for the stability and effectiveness
of the states where they live; to provide a comparative analysis of nationality law in the region and
highlight the gaps that allow statelessness; to identify the populations at risk of statelessness and the
reasons why statelessness is so prevalent, in particular the links between statelessness and migration;
and to make recommendations for the remedies that may address the problem both at national and
regional level. These recommendations are directed to actions that may be taken by the institutions
of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and by Member States acting within
the ECOWAS framework of agreements on free movement, as well as by UN, IOM, and other
international agencies.
A person whose legal identity is secure and who has access to the nationally and internationally
recognised documents needed to show entitlement to the protection of and benefits granted by
nationality of a state finds it hard to understand what it means to be denied a national identity card,
a passport, a vote, an opportunity to stand for public office, a job, the opportunity to go to school, or
any number of other entitlements that depend on recognition of nationality. If a person remains
entirely in the informal sector, documentation may not be essential; but even a peasant farmer in a
remote area, or a nomad moving seasonally with the cattle, will interact with the modern state at
some point. At that point, a document will be needed to show who the person is and, in most cases,
to which state or states he or she belongs. Untold numbers of people are blocked in their lives — at
the minimum, subjected to regular extortion by immigration officials or police — because they cannot
obtain a document recognising their right to belong to at least one state.
Among the causes of statelessness in West Africa are gaps in nationality laws and policies that leave
some people without recognition of the nationality of any country. These gaps include racial, ethnic,
religious and gender discrimination, especially in law but also in practice; the very weak rights attached
in law to birth and residence in the country in many states, even for children who cannot obtain the
nationality of their parents; the almost complete inaccessibility of naturalisation procedures
(especially to other West Africans); the maladaptation of existing laws and procedures for those
persons following a nomadic lifestyle; and the absence of national and regional procedures for the
identification and protection of stateless persons. In addition, the failure to acknowledge significant
colonial-era population transfers and to grant nationality systematically to the populations resident in
West African countries at the time of transition to independence still has consequences today; while
more recent transfers of territory following adjustments to borders have failed to take sufficient
account of the people living in those zones. Nationality laws and administration in the region do not
effectively provide the possibility of integration as nationals of a new country to migrants and their
descendants — despite the very large numbers of people who benefit from the regime of free
movement within the West African region.
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