| Reports by theme : Citizenship |
| African Union | APRM | Broadcast media | Citizenship | Development assistance and governance | Election management | Justice sector | Political participation | Public service delivery | ||||
Citizenship Law in Africa: A comparative studyOpen Society Foundations 21 October 2009 Citizenship Law in Africa: A comparative study, published by two programs of the Open Society Institute (AfriMAP and the Open Society Justice Initiative), describes the often arbitrary, discriminatory, and contradictory citizenship laws that exist from state to state and recommends ways that African countries can bring their citizenship laws in line with international rights norms. The report covers topics such as citizenship by descent, citizenship by naturalization, gender discrimination in citizenship law, dual citizenship, and the right to identity documents and passports. It includes detailed tables on comparative provisions of the law, as well as an analysis of international, African and national jurisprudence on nationality and statelessness. The report, which is twinned with the Zed Books publication Struggles for Citizenship in Africa, featured below, is also available on the Open Society Justice Initiative website. Additional resources are at the Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative website. The full text is also available in French, and the summary and recommendations in Arabic, by clicking on the link to download report in sections and other languages below. The report of the launch event in Kampala and communique from the parallel workshop are here. Second Edition 2010 Now available for download, with corrections and updates relating to Kenya, Libya, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
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Struggles for Citizenship in AfricaZed Books 21 October 2009 Hundreds of thousands of people living in Africa find themselves non-persons in the only state they have ever known. Because they are not recognised as citizens, they cannot get their children registered at birth; they cannot access state health services; they cannot obtain employment without a work permit; and if they leave the country they may not be able to return. Most of all, they cannot vote, stand for office, or work for state institutions. Ultimately, such policies can lead to economic and political disaster, or even war. The conflicts in both Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo have had at their hearts the right of one part of the national population to share with others on equal terms the rights and duties of citizenship. This book brings together new material from across Africa of the most egregious examples of citizenship discrimination, and makes the case for urgent reform of the law. It is twinned with the report published by the Open Society Institute Citizenship Law in Africa: A Comparative Study. Chapter one of the book is available below, and the other chapters can be downloaded by clicking on the link for \'download the report in sections\'; Chapter one is also available in French and Arabic via this link. The book is available for purchase from the Zed Books Website.
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The Right to Nationality and the Secession of South Sudan: A Commentary on the Impact of the New Laws OSIEA / AfriMAP 16 April 2012 In January 2011, after years of civil war, the people of South Sudan voted overwhelmingly for separation from the Republic of Sudan. The Republic of South Sudan obtained its independence six months later, on 9 July 2011. As part of the process of separation of the two states, people of South Sudanese origin who are habitually resident (in some cases for many decades) in what remains the Republic of Sudan are being stripped of their Sudanese nationality and livelihoods. This is happening irrespective of the relative strength of their connections to either state, and their views on which state they would wish to belong to. This summary of a forthcoming detailed legal commentary from the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA) and AfriMAP looks at the issues created by the respective nationality laws of the two Sudans. It makes recommendations aimed at averting a crisis of statelessness that will affect over half a million people, now unfolding against the background of open conflict between the two countries.
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International Law and the Right to Nationality in SudanOpen Society Foundations February 2011 In the aftermath of the referendums on the status of South Sudan and Abyei, questions surrounding nationality and citizenship loom especially large in Sudan. This report, published by the Open Society Foundations, weighs in on the debate and offers specific recommendations on the criteria that should be used to determine citizenship in the new entities. The paper argues strongly that the negotiating parties should reject ethnicity as the basis for determining membership of the new polities. Instead, they should adopt the nondiscriminatory norms established by international human rights law, providing for citizenship to be granted on the basis of any appropriate connection to the territory, respecting the rights of individuals to opt for the nationality they prefer, and with the default option based on habitual residence. Available in Arabic and English.
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Summary and Recommendations | Activities |  |
| Blog posting on citizenship in the Sudans 19 December 2011 Bronwen Manby of AfriMAP authored a blog posting on the soros.org and London School of Economics websites about the right to a nationality in the context of the secession of South Sudan from the Republic of Sudan. http://blog.soros.org/2011/12/citizenship-and-state-succession-in-the-sudans/ more... |
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| Side-meeting on the right to a nationality at the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights 14 May 2010 On 14 May, the Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative (CRAI), the Open Society Institute's AfriMAP, AU Advocacy Programme and Justice Initiative, in collaboration with the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) hosted a discussion on on the right to a nationality in Africa and its impact on the enjoyment of other rights established by the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. The discussion was held in Banjul, the Gambia, and timed to coincide with the 47th Ordinary more... |
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| Workshop and launch of books on citizenship in Africa October 2009 AfriMAP worked with its sister project the Open Society Justice Initiative and the International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) to hold a two day workshop on the African Union mechanisms and protection of refugee, IDP and citizenship rights on 19-20 October 2009. The workshop was held in the margins of the AU special summit on Refugees, Returnees and IDPs, held in Kampala, Uganda, and participants discussed the lack of a right to nationality as both a cause and a consequence of forced displacement more... |
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| Expert meeting on citizenship law in Africa 20 February 2009 AfriMAP is collaborating with the Open Society Institute’s Justice Initiative to produce a comparative study of citizenship law and discrimination in Africa. On 20 February, an expert meeting was held in London, attended by legal scholars and practitioners from Europe and Africa, at which the results of the research were presented and detailed contents of recommendations on the content of nationality laws discussed. Two documents will be published from the research later this year: a detailed monograph more... |
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