CITIZENSHIP AND STATELESSNESS IN THE MEMBER STATES OF THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY 2020 International and African standards Minimum standards for the content of nationality laws are established by the UN human rights treaties, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. UNHCR has published a Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons and guidelines on prevention of childhood statelessness that provide authoritative interpretation of the obligations under these treaties. In addition, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child provides in its Article 6 for every child to have the right to a name, to be registered at birth and to a nationality; the Committee of Experts responsible for the treaty has adopted a General Comment clarifying states’ obligations under this article. The African Committee of Experts, as well as the African Commission and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, have developed extensive jurisprudence interpreting the obligations of states under these treaties. The African Commission also initiated a process to draft a protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ rights on the right to a nationality and the eradication of statelessness in Africa, which is currently before the political organs of the African Union. Protection against statelessness in the legal frameworks of SADC states Among the countries in the SADC region, only Mozambique has a legal framework for nationality administration that complies with the international and African norms on the prevention and reduction of statelessness, including the protections against statelessness among children required by the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. The strongest protections against statelessness are provided by those states with the strongest rights to acquire nationality based on birth in the territory, whatever the legal status of the parents, whether at birth or a later date. The countries in the SADC region that provide the broadest rights to attribution of nationality at birth are Mozambique and Namibia; while Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Africa and Zambia establish the legal right to apply for nationality at majority for those born and still resident in the territory. However, the existence of a right in law is often not converted into its application in practice: South Africa has been ordered by its own courts to adopt regulations enabling this right to be implemented. Laws that are based purely on descent in attribution of nationality at birth, do not contain minimum protections for vulnerable children, and that restrict access to naturalisation in practice, place significant numbers at risk of statelessness. This risk is exacerbated where the law is not clear or different laws contradict each other. The states with the weakest legal protections against statelessness for children born in their territory who cannot obtain recognition of the nationality of one of their parents are Botswana, Eswatini, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles and Zimbabwe; Tanzania must be added to that list, since, although its law provides on paper for acquisition of citizenship based on birth in Tanzania, a purely descent-based rule is applied in practice. There are six states that have no legal provision to provide nationality to children found on their territory whose parents are not known (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, and Tanzania); 3 UNHCR / December, 2020