Acquisition of nationality through naturalization small minority receiving the documents for which they had applied. The Government participants expressed their commitment to reinforcing the implementation of the statelessness provisions and application procedures for Kenyan nationality, including by ascertaining why affected populations groups were not benefitting from the relevant provisions of the 2011 Act. UNHCR’s study on the Makonde was published in February 2015. It concluded that “the Makonde in Kenya are integrated into Kenyan society in many ways” but only a small fraction possessed documents proving their status as Kenyan citizens. The study concluded that “over half of respondents had approached Kenyan Government officials to register for Kenyan documentation, predominantly the national identity card, but in most cases their application was either rejected or not acted upon”.109 The most common reason given by officials when rejecting a national identity card application was that the individual was not entitled to nationality documentation, demonstrating a lack of awareness or misunderstanding of the relevant provisions of the 2011 Act. In August 2015, the Commission on Administrative Justice under the Office of the Ombudsman published Stateless in Kenya: An Investigation Report on the Crisis of Acquiring Identification Documents in Kenya.110 The report found that there were undue delays in processing and issuing vital documents, with some respondents having to wait for up to three years. BREAKTHROUGH IN 2015 – INTERDEPARTMENTAL TASK FORCE AND PROFILING EXERCISE In 2014, the Kwale County Justice and Legal Assembly Committee, adopted a motion recommending the registration of the Makonde as Kenyan citizens, and sent it to Senate, which supported the recommendation. In 2015, President Kenyatta agreed to review the situation of the Makonde.111 He called for the formation of an inter-departmental 109 UNHCR Kenya, Integrated but Undocumented: A Study into the Nationality Status of the Makonde Community in Kenya, February 2015, page 31, available at: https://www.khrc.or.ke/mobile-publications/equality-and-anti-discrimination/68makonde-community-assessment/file.html 110 UNHCR, Stateless in Kenya: An Investigation Report on the Crisis of Acquiring Identification Documents in Kenya, August 2015, available at: http://citizenshiprightsafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/CAJ_Report-Identificationdocuments_2015.pdf 111 Wanja Lisa Munaita, Kenya’s stateless Makonde people finally obtain papers, UNHCR, 27 October 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/582c79714.html U N H C R > G P P A C T I O N 1 : R E S O LV I N G E X I S T I N G M A J O R S I T U AT I O N S O F S TAT E L E S S N E S S 71