I previously wrote about two marginalised communities in Kenya, the Nubian and the Somali communities, and their struggle to obtain legal status and citizenship. Both communities face burdens not imposed on most other Kenyans. But they are not alone in campaigning for recognition as citizens of Kenya. In this blog I reflect on the recent progress made by the Shona …
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year’s COP26 UN climate change conference has been postponed. But the urgency of tackling climate change has not gone away in the face of the pandemic. As the UN explains: “COVID-19 is the most urgent threat facing humanity today, but we cannot forget that climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity over the …
In this blog I take a second look at legal identity for children in light of South Africa’s recent proposals to refuse to issue birth certificates to children born in South Africa to foreign parents. I look at the new proposals which have attracted much criticism and consider attempts elsewhere to do the same. The impact of restricting birth registration …
The recent Universal Children’s Day on 20 November raised the issue of legal identity and access to basic rights for children. Children’s Day celebrates the date UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). In this blog I want to use the Convention’s provisions on legal identity and identity documents as a starting point to …
In my last blog, I looked at statelessness determination procedures as a tool to help eradicate statelessness and mitigate the effects of statelessness for stateless people. In this blog, I want to come back to this issue. I look more closely at how the procedure can help both stateless people and the state, which countries have made use of the …
The causes of statelessness are many and can include discrimination against particular ethnic or religious groups, or on the basis of gender, the emergence of new States and transfers of territory between existing States, and gaps in nationality laws. But statelessness is not an accident. It is often the result of legal, policy, or political decisions made by states. States …
