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... No African state has general provisions on facilitated naturalization for refugees. In general, access to naturalization for refugees is difficult, and in some countries this is even stated in law: in Uganda, the ordinary naturalization procedure (known in Uganda as registration) requires residence of 10 years and satisfaction of other conditions; but persons born in Uganda of refugee parents or those who did not themselves 'legally and voluntarily' immigrate to Uganda can only apply under the procedure known as naturalization that requires 20 years residence (Walker 2011;Alenyo 2014;Manby 2018b). Even in Zambia, where the 2017 Refugee Act provides for naturalization to be facilitated 'as far as possible', this is only for former refugees who no longer hold that status (because the 'ceased circumstances' clause of the UN Refugee Convention has been invoked). ...
... In some countries, there are reduced fees for certain categories of applicant: in Tanzania itself, a reduced fee of US$870 is applicable for those would have qualified to register for citizenship under the transitional provisions of the 1961 constitution, and their descendants born in Tanzania. In Uganda, the regular fee for registration is US$1,000, but there is a reduced fee of approximately US$30 in case of marriage or 'people who have lived all their lives in Uganda and consider themselves as Ugandans except for the citizenship papers'; even so, fewer than 1,000 people acquire citizenship each year -and no refugee is known to be among them (Manby 2018b). In Zambia, the new constitution and citizenship act adopted in 2016 eased access to naturalization on paper, but new regulations reproduced previous requirements (Manby 2020). ...
... A new law provided for special temporary procedures to allow people resident in Kenya since 1963 and their descendants, to register as citizens. Although hard to access, a group of 1,500 people of Mozambican descent, originally workers on sisal plantations brought to Kenya in the 1950s, were eventually registered as Kenyan in 2016-17; followed by a few thousand descendants of Zimbabwean missionaries, mainly of Shona ethnicity, who had arrived in Kenya in the early 1960s; Rwandan-origin tea plantation workers and other communities made similar demands (Manby 2018b). ...
The existing literature on the grant of citizenship by naturalization largely focuses on the experience of Europe and the immigrant-founded states of the Americas and Australasia. This article considers the African experience. It sets out the comparative law on naturalization, and the limited information that exists on the implementation of these rules in practice, noting that formal naturalization is rare in all countries in the continent. The article argues that amendments to the rules on naturalization are mainly performative, rather than aiming at any broader public policy outcome. Although there have been some important initiatives by some states to reach out to particular groups excluded from citizenship, these are rare. Yet public attitudes to acquisition of citizenship by foreigners are more open than the practice. Historically, integration of foreigners into the citizen body has happened largely through local processes of certification of identity. New efforts to strengthen identification systems in Africa may well make these processes more closed, and also make the difficulty of formal naturalization more visible.
... In Sudan, the introduction of a new civil registration system and national identity card following the secession of South Sudan was mobilised as an opportunity to screen those alleged to be of southern Sudanese origin and remove their right to Sudanese citizenship (Assal, 2014). In Uganda and Tanzania, the introduction of a biometric national identity card, where no such card had previously existed, where interpretation of the citizenship law was challenging (to say the least), and where birth registration rates were low, led to large numbers of applications lying undecided because of the lack of a procedure to resolve uncertain status, and subsequent exclusion from services (Manby, 2018b;Perrot & Owachi, 2018;Unwanted Witness, 2020). ...
... In some jurisdictions, this includes the power to recognise nationality on the basis that a person has always been treated as a citizen in practice (is in possession d'état de national), a procedure that responds realisti-cally to a context in which civil registration was and remains very incomplete (Manby, 2018a, Chapter 6). These models have already been drawn on as inspiration for the design of procedures to mitigate the extreme executive discretion that is the heritage of the former British territories -for example in Kenya, to implement new provisions in the 2010 constitution for the grant of nationality to children of unknown parents (Manby, 2018b). ...
The right to legal identity, previously neglected by the development community, has gained recognition by the adoption of a target in the SDGs to ‘provide legal identity for all, including birth registration’. In the initial absence of definition of ‘legal identity’ beyond birth registration, different actors have interpreted the target according to their own priorities, whether they be human rights protection, development, national security – or rent-seeking. Long-standing scholarship recognises both the positive and negative potential impacts of state identification systems; the adoption of new biometric technologies strengthens these potential impacts, for good or ill. The importance of data protection and the risks to privacy created by digital technologies are well-recognised. This article returns to arguments made by Simon Szreter in World Development in 2007, to argue the critical importance of independent oversight of executive decisions relating to legal identity; it adds an emphasis on the detailed regulation of enrolment processes, and the importance of nationality law reforms, as government-backed identity schemes are upgraded or introduced. The article argues that the introduction of new ‘foundational’ national identification systems for adults and more pervasive requirements for proof of identity, without simultaneously addressing gaps in the legal framework governing the determination of legal status, risks making the problems around proof of legal identity worse rather than better.
... While the newly democratic South African government that took office in 1994 provided a series of amnesties by which migrant workers and refugees could obtain permanent residence in South Africa many remain without citizenship 417 ; in Tanzania many regarded themselves as having become Tanzanian citizens by the public pronouncements of President Julius Nyerere, their current status is not certain. 418 In 2011, UNHCR identified a group of several hundred people of Mozambican origin "returned" from Zimbabwe who were stateless, with neither nationality recognised, and launched a project to assist the Mozambican authorities in an exercise to identify and provide documentation to Mozambican migrants and their children in South Africa and other neighbouring countries. 419 Former Angolan refugees in South Africa have struggled to secure anything more than short-term residence permits. ...
This article examines the prevention of and protection against statelessness through analysis of case law and laws that have dealt with this matter both internationally and at a regional level, with specific reference to two continents (Africa and Asia). The analysis also includes the remedies that are available to individuals who are stateless as well as the enforcement thereof. Cognisance is given to statelessness being the state of not belonging to any country, or not being recognised as a national of any country. The article also analyses how colonialism contributed to people being stateless and how laws have changed beyond the colonial era. Emphasis is placed on the need for consensus between states on what measures should be considered when determining citizenship. The desktop, library research approach will be used in this research. Primary and secondary sources will be consulted. Case law, conventions, and statutes will be the main sources of law. The research will evaluate the differences between the selected jurisdictions’ nationality laws. The way that nationality rules have been applied in those jurisdictions will also be determined by consulting case law. Additionally, journal articles, opinion pieces, and other internet-based resources will be used as secondary sources for the research. These sources offer valuable insights into the concerns expressed by interested parties about nationality and the elements that each jurisdiction has considered and needs to incorporate into their legal framework.
Stateless persons are individuals living within our societies, not living like others belonging to a particular state. Statelessness is a limit in their lives which causes several challenges to the enjoyment of some of their human rights. This category of persons requires legal protection and assistance. This paper has analysed who is a stateless person and how statelessness comes into existence. Also, it analyses the challenges facing this category of persons and examines their protection universally.
The cradle of the Makonde Nation of Mozambique is historically rich with unmatched artefacts that convey experienced socio-political struggles and unique heritage. The Makonde nation fought heroic wars that led to the end of imperialism as well as colonialism, and ultimately led to the liberation of Mozambique in 1975 from Portugal. The post-independent era, however, was marred by a 16-year-long civil war that left socio-political and economic bruises on the entire country and to a certain extent destabilised the Southern African Development Community ( SADC ). In 1992, a civil war erupted, and the attainment of peace became elusive. The unresolved socio-economic and political attrition between the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front ( FRELIMO ) and the opposition Mozambican National Resistance ( RENAMO ) contributed to the internal political crisis which compounded inequalities and socio-economic imbalances. Subsequently, opportunist transnational actors such as Al-Shabaab exploited these conditions in the frail yet minerally wealthy region of Cabo Delgado. The proceeding unfolding of events reveals the implications of unresolved past conflicts potentially escalating into complex conflicts – terrorism. Reflecting on past struggles and their influence on present conflicts, a qualitative methodology employing a desktop approach with documental and historical data analysis to determine how the prospects for full-scale peace, economic development, and sustainable security and stability can be attained. The question is: to what extent do the drivers of resource conflict contribute to radicalism and violent extremism as is the case of Cabo Delgado, in Mozambique? This paper argues that apart from other regional dimensions such as border proximity with terror-prone states such as Tanzania, the ill-management of natural resources and ambiguous approaches to the resolution of internal conflicts create conditions for terrorism in Cabo Delgado. The interdependence and cooperation perspective presents opportunities where collective implementation of robust counterterror strategic plans may effectively redress the associated resource conflict challenges in Mozambique.
Industrialization and Assimilation examines the process of ethnic identity change in a broad historical context. Green explains how and why ethnicity changes across time, showing that, by altering the basis of economic production from land to labour and removing people from the 'idiocy of rural life', industrialization makes societies more ethnically homogenous. More specifically, the author argues that industrialization lowers the relative value of rural land, leading people to identify less with narrow rural identities in favour of broader identities that can aid them in navigating the formal urban economy. Using large-scale datasets that span the globe as well as detailed case studies ranging from mid-twentieth-century Turkey to contemporary Botswana, Somalia and Uganda, as well as evidence from Native Americans in the United States and the Māori in New Zealand, Industrialization and Assimilation provides a new framework to understand the origins of modern ethnic identities.
The security situation in East Africa is double-natured, no armed conflicts are being waged in the traditional territory of EAC partner countries at present, and the region on the whole is enjoying relative stability, which, however, has been clouded since 2015 by a political crisis in Burundi (Shlenskaya in Proceedings of the Institute for African Studies (IAS) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) 1 (38):84–98, 2017).
Kenya and Uganda are amongst the countries that, for different historical, political, and economic reasons, have embarked on law reform processes as regards to citizenship. In 2009, Uganda made provisions in its laws to allow citizens to have dual citizenship while Kenya’s 2010 constitution similarly introduced it, and at the same time, a general prohibition on dual citizenship was lifted, that is, a ban on state officers, including the President and Deputy President, being dual nationals (Manby, 2018). Against this background, I analysed the reasons for which these countries that previously held stringent laws and policies against dual citizenship, made a shift in a close time proximity. Given their geo-political roles, location, regional, continental, and international obligations, I conducted a comparative study on the processes, actors, impact, and effect. A specific period of 2000 to 2010 was researched, that is, from when the debates for law reforms emerged, to the processes being implemented, the actors, and the implications. According to Rubenstein (2000, p. 520), citizenship is observed in terms of “political institutions” that are free to act according to the will of, in the interests of, or with authority over, their citizenry. Institutions are emergent national or international, higher-order factors above the individual spectrum, having the interests and political involvement of their actors without requiring recurring collective mobilisation or imposing intervention to realise these regularities. Transnational institutions are organisations with authority beyond single governments. Given their International obligations, I analysed the role of the UN, AU, and EAC in influencing the citizenship debates and reforms in Kenya and Uganda. Further, non-state actors, such as civil society, were considered. Veblen, (1899) describes institutions as a set of settled habits of thought common to the generality of men. Institutions function only because the rules involved are rooted in shared habits of thought and behaviour although there is some ambiguity in the definition of the term “habit”. Whereas abstracts and definitions depend on different analytical procedures, institutions restrain some forms of action and facilitate others. Transnational institutions both restrict and aid behaviour. The famous “invisible hand” is nothing else but transnational institutions. Transnational theories, as applied to politics, posit two distinct forms that are of influence over policy and political action (Veblen, 1899). This influence and durability of institutions is “a function of the degree to which they are instilled in political actors at the individual or organisational level, and the extent to which they thereby “tie up” material resources and networks. Against this background, transitional networks with connection to Kenya and Uganda were considered alongside the diaspora from these two countries and their role in the debate and reforms on Dual citizenship. Sterian (2013, p. 310) notes that Nation states may be vulnerable to institutional influence and this vulnerability can pose a threat to a nation’s autonomy, political legitimacy, and to the democratic public law. Transnational institutions sometimes “collide with the sovereignty of the state when they create new structures for regulating cross-border relationships”. However, Griffin (2003) disagrees that transnational institutional behaviour is premised on the principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence. Transnational institutions have become the main target of the lobby groups and civil society, consequently leading to excessive politicisation. Kenya and Uganda are member states not only of the broader African union but also of the E.A.C which has adopted elements of socio-economic uniformity. Therefore, in the comparative analysis, I examine the role of the East African Community and its partners in the dual citizenship debate on the two countries. I argue in the analysis that it is not only important to be a citizen within Kenya or Uganda but also important to discover how the issue of dual citizenship is legally interpreted within the borders of each individual nation-state. In light of this discussion, I agree with Mamdani’s definition of the nation-state as a unique form of power introduced in Africa by colonial powers between 1880 and 1940 whose outcomes can be viewed as “debris of a modernist postcolonial project, an attempt to create a centralised modern state as the bearer of Westphalia sovereignty against the background of indirect rule” (Mamdani, 1996, p. xxii). I argue that this project has impacted the citizenship debate through the adopted legal framework of post colonialism, built partly on a class system, ethnic definitions, and political affiliation. I, however, insist that the nation-state should still be a vital custodian of the citizenship debate, not in any way denying the individual the rights to identity and belonging. The question then that arises is which type of nation-state? Mamdani (1996, p. 298) asserts that the core agenda that African states faced at independence was threefold: deracialising civil society; detribalising the native authority; and developing the economy in the context of unequal international relations. Post-independence governments grappled with overcoming the citizen and subject dichotomy through either preserving the customary in the name of “defending tradition against alien encroachment or abolishing it in the name of overcoming backwardness and embracing triumphant modernism”. Kenya and Uganda are among countries that have reformed their citizenship laws attesting to Mamdani’s latter assertion. Mamdani’s (1996) assertions on how African states continue to deal with the issue of citizenship through either the defence of tradition against subjects or abolishing it in the name of overcoming backwardness and acceptance of triumphant modernism are based on the colonial legal theory and the citizen-subject dichotomy within Africa communities. To further create a wider perspective on legal theory, I argue that those assertions above, point to the historical divergence between the republican model of citizenship, which places emphasis on political agency as envisioned in Rousseau´s social contract, as opposed to the liberal model of citizenship, which stresses the legal status and protection (Pocock, 1995). I, therefore, compare the contexts of both Kenya and Uganda, the actors, the implications of transnationalism and post-nationalism, on the citizens, the nation-state and the region. I conclude by highlighting the shortcomings in the law reforms that allowed for dual citizenship, further demonstrating an urgent need to address issues, such as child statelessness, gender nationality laws, and the rights of dual citizens. Ethnicity, a weak nation state, and inconsistent citizenship legal reforms are closely linked to the historical factors of both countries. I further indicate the economic and political incentives that influenced the reform. Keywords: Citizenship, dual citizenship, nation state, republicanism, liberalism, transnationalism, post-nationalism
