In this post I examine the issue of statelessness in Côte d’Ivoire. I argue that the country needs to move on from the discriminatory treatment of stateless and undocumented people within its borders, especially children. Côte d’Ivoire also needs to take steps to fulfil the commitments it has made to eliminate statelessness under international law. Forced and voluntary migration …
In its recent judgment Hoti v Croatia the European Court of Human Rights considered what it means for the Applicant to be stateless and without access to an effective and accessible procedure in the host state to obtain residency and legal status. Background to the claim in Hoti v Croatia Mr Hoti, the Applicant, moved to Croatia in the 1980s as a teenager …
In my earlier post,I discussed the domestic and international legal provisions on voting and voter registration in Kenya. In this post, I delve deeper and look at the barriers facing minority communities in Kenya in evidencing their Kenyan citizenship. My focus is on the experiences of evidencing citizenship for Kenyan-Somalis and the Nubian Community in Kenya. Kenya’s Somali Ethnic Group …
In this blog I tend to examine the legal aspects of identity and of how it impacts groups and individuals. But I have noticed recently a lot of chatter about blockchain technology and its potential uses in relation to legal identity and for identity documents. Being the kind of lawyer that is not that technically savvy, I want to delve …
The recent elections in Kenya have been widely reported, especially in light of the allegations of fraud and hacking. But I want to consider them from the point of view of voter eligibility in Kenya, which plays into the bigger issue of ID cards and identity in Kenya. The domestic and the international legal context are both relevant. Domestic law …
There was a General Election in my home country on 8 June 2017 and local elections at the beginning of May of this year. The general election was unexpected since the next one was not officially due until 2020. Everyone who had not was encouraged to register to vote. Elections and voting are as good as any place to start …
Before the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and SDG 16.9 there were the Millennium Development Goals (“MDGs”). They did not strictly address identity or legal identity, but the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) did underline the urgency for establishing adequate civil registration systems. For example, six of the eight MDGs rely on accurate estimates of fertility, mortality and causes of death data …
