3. ENSURING THAT TODAY’S REFUGEES ARE NOT TOMORROW’S STATELESS: SOLUTIONS IN A REFUGEE CONTEXT Another particular aspect of the risk of statelessness in the region is the lack of documentation available to many of the region’s citizens. In 2013, UNICEF estimated that Uganda and Tanzania were among the 10 countries worldwide with a combined number of 12 million children under five unregistered.10 Although birth registration is not proof of nationality in and of itself, it is critical to establishing the elements necessary to establish citizenship, including both parentage and location of birth. In a context in which the evidentiary elements of citizenship are likely to be unavailable, practical measures and the political and social understandings of administrative officials take on particular importance. The creation of significant numbers of refugees across the region has taken place within this context and inevitably interacts with the complex dynamics of national citizenship. The fundamental premise on which refugee status is configured is that those who are either legally excluded from, or in practice cannot access, the rights of citizenship in their countries of origin as a result of persecution are given a surrogate form of protection – but one that is temporary until such time as they can meaningfully re-assert the bonds of citizenship. But in reality, too often this re-nationalisation does not happen: while the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Refugee Convention) enjoins States Parties to facilitate the naturalisation of refugees in their countries “as far as possible” (Article 34), in practice in the Great Lakes region this seldom happens, leaving return as the only viable means to reassert citizenship.11 Yet return remains elusive for the hundreds of thousands who remain in a protracted situation of displacement for years or even decades, leaving them in a semipermanent state of emergency. Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp, which has now been in place for 25 years, provides a stark example. 10 11 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Every Child’s Birth Right: Inequities and trends in birth registration, 2013. For instance refugees from Burundi who have been living in Tanzania had to wait for almost four decades for the Government of Tanzania to offer them naturalisation – and even in this instance, the fact that they were eventually given the option of applying for Tanzanian citizenship was seen as somehow extraordinary. See Centre for the Study of Forced Migration, International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) and Social Science Research Council, Going Home or Staying Home? Ending Displacement for Burundian Refugees in Tanzania, Citizenship and Forced Migration in the Great Lakes Region: Working Paper 1, 2008. 74