• Reform of civil registration procedures to ensure that registration of births and other civil status events, and the issue of certificates recording that registration, are freely and universally available, including to the most marginalised groups. • The removal of procedural barriers to recognition of nationality, especially those that place additional administrative burdens to prove entitlement to identity documents on members of certain ethnic or religious groups that are not applied to the majority of the population. • The admissibility of evidence of identity and nationality other than the standard documents generally required in law, including witness testimony. • The establishment of exemption procedures for indigent persons for the payment of application or processing fees for documents. A strategic decision that may be required in some cases is whether a remedy is acceptable that requires those whose nationality is not currently recognised to accept their “foreignness” as a first step, meaning that they must apply to acquire nationality, rather than have documents issued recognising an existing nationality. Whether to accept such a resolution will depend on national context and on consultation with the clients in the case.  The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights specifically rejected a special application procedure that had been put in place by the Ivorian government to allow some categories of person to acquire Ivorian nationality as a remedy for those who should rather have been recognised as holding nationalité d’origine (nationality from birth).166 Many other examples of procedural reforms ordered by courts are referred to in u section 7 Legal arguments and u section 7.5: Arbitrary denial or deprivation of nationality and the right to due process and u section 7.8: Birth registration. Symbolic and punitive damages In some cases, an important non-material remedy sought by victims will be an acknowledgement by the state that denial of nationality was wrong—an important element of support for a broader campaign for membership of that society.  The Inter-American Court ordered that its judgments in cases relating to the Dominican Republic be publicised in national newspapers and, in the Yean and Bosico case, that there should be a “public act to acknowledge international responsibility and to make reparation to the children Dilcia Yean and Violeta Bosico and their next of kin.”167  The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (informally known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal) heard charges of genocide against two minority groups, including the Vietnamese minority whose status as Cambodian nationals remains contested. The Trial Chamber found that the crimes to which the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia were subjected during the Khmer Rouge genocide “caused, in part, their present-day harm in that, during the various occasions in which they were forcibly relocated by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, victims were forced to leave behind, destroy or otherwise lost, important documentation demonstrating their ties to Cambodia”. The court endorsed “legal and civic education to allow Civil Parties to better understand their legal status according to Cambodian law” as measures of “collective and moral reparations”.168 In other cases, the statement that a group has faced discrimination and exclusion, and that this exclusion should end, may contribute to a change of political discourse, affirming that those affected have a right to inclusion, even if this does not impact the legal situation or ensure issue of identity documents to any particular person.  In Kenya, advocacy of various types—including protest marches and petitions to parliament—have resulted in presidential declarations that certain minority groups, including Kenyan Asians and Kenyans with origins in the island of Pemba, are to be treated as Kenyan ethnic communities.169 Although of contested legal force, these declarations have represented an important acknowledgement that these groups have been excluded by discriminatory practices from recognition of their entitlement to Kenyan citizenship.170 Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) v. Côte d’Ivoire, Communication No. 318/06, African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, 28 February 2015, para. 132 et seq., https://achpr.au.int/index.php/en/decisions-communications/open-society-justice-initiative-v-cote-divoire-31806. 166 167 Case of the Girls Yean and Bosico, supra n 52, paras 234–235; Expelled Dominicans and Haitians, supra n 64, para 460. Case No.002/02, Trial Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Judgment of 18 November 2018, paras 4458-59; see also https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/document/court/case-00202-judgement. See also Lyma Nguyen and Christoph Sperfeldt. “Victim Participation and Minorities in Internationalised Criminal Trials: Ethnic Vietnamese Civil Parties at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia”, Macquarie Law Journal Vol.4 (2014), pp.97–126; Christoph Sperfeldt, “Nationality as Reparation? The Case 002/02 Trial Judgment at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia”, Statelessness & Citizenship Review Vol. 5, no. 1 (2023), pp.118–26. 168 Presidential Proclamation: In the Matter of the Petitions by the Asian Community for Formal Recognition as a Tribe in Kenya, Gazette Notice No. 7245, Kenya Gazette, Vol. CXIX—No. 102, 21 July 2017; Presidential Proclamation in the Matter of the Petition by the Pemba Community for Formal Recognition as an Ethnic Community of Kenya, Gazette Notice 1135, Kenya Government Gazette, Vol. CXXV–No. 23, 30 January, 2023. 169 Dalle Abraham et al., “Citizenship Is a Right, Not a Political Tool”, The Elephant (blog), 9 October 2023, https://www.theelephant.info/analysis/2023/10/09/ citizenship-is-a-right-not-a-political-tool/. 170 U N H C R | L I T I G AT I N G T H E R I G H T T O A N AT I O N A L I T Y: A G U I D E F O R P R AC T I T I O N E R S 51