SOLVING STATELESSNESS a possibility in Uganda as refugees are routinely refused applications for naturalisation. Faced with the lack of access to legal options, many refugees talked of how they were planning to “disappear” into Uganda instead, thereby reinforcing their lack of recognised legal status. They talked of how they were being forced to hide their identities and change their names27 – some pretending to be Congolese refugees and others identifying themselves as Munyankole, a Ugandan ethnic group: “[P]eople who I do not know and who are in civilian clothes, I cannot tell them I’m a refugee from Rwanda. I tell them I am Munyankole because I can speak that language. Or else I tell them I am Congolese [...] And those that I have told that I am a refugee from Rwanda, I will not mention that I am a Hutu.”28 Since the time of the research, however, there has been some hope in this regard, as the Constitutional Court in Uganda issued a ruling in October 2015 clarifying that refugees do, in fact, have the right to apply for naturalisation under Ugandan law.29 Although this has not yet been tested, it raises hope that naturalisation might soon become an option. In addition, there have also been discussions at a political level as part of a broader protection and solutions strategy, which is now integrated into the national development plan. In a context in which documentation is widely unavailable, and in which social understandings are dominant, it is important to recognise that the displaced can creatively exploit these conditions to bolster their own protection. However, these strategies are ultimately fragile as long as they are not accompanied by legal legitimacy. It was to deal with circumstances in which return was unviable that the mechanisms of international protection were created by the international community. Refugee status is supposed to fill the gap between an experience of citizenship which is unable to deliver on fundamental human rights protections and the eventual enjoyment of effective citizenship. Indeed, the foundation of refugee law constituted one of the first direct challenges to the exclusivity of the State-citizen link with respect to protection, inserting the refugee into a new community and establishing a basic set of rights to which the persecuted exile was entitled. UNHCR was then charged with assisting 27 28 29 Interview with refugee woman, Nakivale, Uganda, 27 November 2009. Interview with refugee man, Nakivale, Uganda, 17 November 2009. See, Constitutional Court of Uganda, Constitutional Petition No. 34 of 2010, Center for Public Interest Law Ltd Salima Namusobya v. The Attorney General, 21 October 2015. 87