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 …
Season’s Greetings! This blog will take a short break over the festive period, returning in January for more on legal identity, belonging, citizenship and statelessness. For those celebrating Christmas and New Year this month – enjoy the holidays. If, like me, you are travelling this holiday season – for pleasure or to join friends and family – spare a thought …
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 …
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 …
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), 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 …
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 …
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 …
