The Abidjan Declaration – West Africa’s commitment to eliminate statelessness

What is the Abidjan Declaration on the eradication of statelessness?

The Abidjan Declaration was adopted in February 2015 by the Member States of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) ¹, to support UNHCR’s global campaign to end statelessness by 2024.  It was endorsed by the Summit of ECOWAS Heads of State and Governments in Accra, Ghana on 19 May 2015.

The statelessness problem in Africa and in the ECOWAS region

As the African Union recognises:

“Despite the high number of stateless persons across the world, this problem is particularly acute in Africa, because of the history of the creation of borders, border populations and migration within the continent. It is further exacerbated by weak capacity of many African states today and their inability or failure to respond appropriately to contemporary migration. Statelessness and deprivation of nationality have become political persecution tools and a means of exclusion, while ethnicity and race have been explicitly introduced as grounds for access to nationality in several countries, which goes against all international standards on non-discrimination as well as a threat to the African aspiration for a peaceful and an integrated continent.” ²

In the ECOWAS region, many children cannot acquire a nationality at birth because of discriminatory provisions in national legislation that prevent mothers from passing on their nationality to their children. The fact that up to 60 million people within the ECOWAS population have never been registered at birth and do not hold any document proving their identity and nationality exacerbates the problem. According to ECOWAS:

“Populations without birth certificates, abandoned children, undocumented stranded migrants, and individuals living in areas of state succession and border disputes constitute some of the major groups of people at risk of statelessness in West Africa.” ³

How does the Abidjan Declaration relate to the Statelessness Conventions and African human rights treaties?

The Abidjan Declaration calls on ECOWAS Member States to reform discriminatory nationality laws or gaps in their legislation. It aims to ensure that those who are entitled to nationality can obtain the relevant documents and prove their legal identity. The Declaration requires ECOWAS Member States to prepare a plan of action to end statelessness.  The Declaration seeks to further commitments made under the two conventions on statelessness: the 1954 Convention on the status of statelessness and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Currently, only twelve of the fifteen states are signatories to these Convention.

The Declaration aims to fill gaps in regional human rights treaties and to enhance provisions already found in regional treaty law.  For example, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights contains no provision on nationality. The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child does a bit better and provides in Article 6 that:

“Every child has the right to a name at birth; Every child shall be registered immediately after birth; Every child has the right to acquire a nationality”.

The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa provides in Article 6 that:

“A woman has the right to retain her nationality or to acquire the nationality of her husband. The woman has the same right as men regarding the nationality of their children except where otherwise provided for in national legislation and national safety requirements.”

It is this last provision – states’ continued reliance on laws which do not ensure gender equality, and which disproportionately affect women – which the Declaration seeks to target.

The commitments made by ECOWAS in the Abidjan Declaration are now being used to further strengthen the resolve to eradicate statelessness more widely in Africa.  Article 5 of the Declaration calls on the African Union to prepare and adopt a protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the right to a nationality.

Updates and progress on the commitments in the Abidjan Declaration

So what progress has been made since the Abidjan Declaration was adopted in 2015?

As of May 2017, 12 of the 15 states are working on, or have completed, their action plans on statelessness.  Burkina Faso is the latest state to do so in February 2018.  Sierra Leone has reformed its laws to allow women to confer their nationality to their children on an equal basis to men. Sierra Leone also co-sponsored discussions at the UN Commission on the Status of Women to advance gender equality in nationality laws. Sudan too is taking steps with a proposed amendment to its 1994 Nationality Act which would allow Sudanese mothers to confer nationality to their children where the father is from South Sudan ⁴. This would bring the law in line with Sudanese fathers’ rights to confer nationality where the mother is from South Sudan.  Togo too is looking at inequality in its nationality laws.

The AU draft Protocol on Nationality and Statelessness is also not forgotten. In South Africa, in March, a second meeting of Member States experts took place to review the Protocol.  A third meeting is also planned for this year to try to finalise the Protocol, before it is presented to the AU’s technical committee. The draft will then be put forward for adoption by AU Member States. ⁵

As well as being laudable, these recent actions by signatories to the Abidjan Declaration demonstrate quite clearly that statelessness is not something that only happens to migrants or refugees coming into a state. Many stateless people have never left the country in which they were born, nor do they want to. Rather, unequal nationality and residency laws prevent them from being recognised as citizens and evidencing their legal identity.

One of the key ways to combat statelessness and to regularise the position of those within state borders is to look at domestic legislation. With one person in 110 in the world forcibly displaced ⁶, states cannot always control refugee and migrant movements at and within their borders.  But they can, and should, look at their own laws and make them fair, reasonable and equal.