A Study of Statelessness in South Sudan - 2017 doubts about an application, the applicant is told to go to Juba for further verification.85 This is most often the case for communities facing discrimination, such as the Falata. A government official in Aweil explained, “The only people who are facing the rejection of nationality applications, and who are told to go to Juba for further verifications, are members from Falata community”.86 Cost of transportation to Juba is once more a significant barrier; the cost of transport from Aweil to Juba, for example, is estimated to be almost 10,000 SSP (about 82 USD in June 2017).87 2.2.3 Birth Registration Birth registration “is the first step in securing the recognition [of children] before the law, safeguarding their rights and ensuring that any violation of these rights does not go unnoticed”.88 Further, birth registration “provides proof of descent and of place of birth and therefore underpins the implementation of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness and related human rights norms”.89 Although birth registration does not itself confer nationality upon a child, “birth registration is nevertheless important for the prevention of statelessness because it establishes a legal record of where a child was born and who his or her parents are. This constitutes a key form of proof [that] a person has acquired nationality by birth on territory ( jus soli) or descent ( jus sanguinis), which are the most common bases for acquisition of nationality at birth”.90 Before the secession of South Sudan, registration of births took place in Juba, Malakal, and Wau teaching hospitals. During these registrations, issuing the birth certificates was optional.91 According to the most authoritative statistics available on the topic, the percentage of registered children under 5 stood at 35 per cent before secession, at a time when South Sudan was part of Sudan, a country with greater human and financial resources than South Sudan presently.92 Since independence, due to the lack of a legal framework for birth registration, birth certificates have never been issued.93 A ‘Registration Steering Committee and Technical Working Group’ was put in place in 2012, but the group has not yet managed to secure the Civil Registration Law. 94 Currently, the DNPI estimates that “about 90% of South Sudan’s population do not have birth certificates, especially people in the rural areas”.95 In the meantime, UNICEF provides state hospitals with provisional birth notifications, which are used to document the birth of the babies born in the hospital.96 While these birth notifications are not accepted as legal proof of age, they can facilitate acquisition of an assessment of age at the medical commission, as detailed below.97 It is important to note, given the widespread displacement occurring in the South Sudanese context, that foreign birth certificates are accepted if the birth took place abroad. 98 The lack of birth registration poses significant administrative and procedural issues with regards to the acquisition of the nationality, and subsequently the issuance of a nationality KII with Government Official in Aweil. KII with Government Official in Aweil. 87 FGD with male Falata in Aweil. 88 United Nations Children’s Fund (2002) Birth Registration: Right from the start, Innocenti Digest No. 9, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre: Florence, available at: https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/330/ 89 UNHCR, Guidelines on Statelessness No. 4: Ensuring Every Child’s Right to Acquire a Nationality through Articles 1-4 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, 21 December 2012, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/50d460c72.html 90 UNHCR (2013) Child Protection Brief on birth registration, available at http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/523fe9214.pdf 91 UNICEF (2015) “Situation Assessment of Children in South Sudan”, p.136, available at: http://www.childrenofsouthsudan.info/wp-content/ uploads/2016/03/SA-SSUD_Mar-11-2016-Word_BM-Mar-22-2016a.pdf 92 National Bureau of Statistics (2010) South Sudan Household Survey, p.35, available at: http://ssnbss.org/sites/default/files/2016-08/Sudan_ Household_Health_Survey_Report_2010.pdf 93 UNICEF (2015) “Situation Assessment of Children in South Sudan”, p.8. 94 National Bureau of Statistics (2012) “South Sudan CRVS Country Report”, available at: http://docplayer.net/31355191-South-sudan-crvs-countryreport.html 95 KII with DNPI Staff in Juba. 96 KII with UNHCR Staff in Juba. 97 Conversation with a Director of the DNPI, Juba. 98 Conversation with a Director of the DNPI, Juba. 85 86 25