Citizenship Law in Africa

Few African countries provide for an explicit right to a nationality. Laws and practices governing citizenship leave hundreds of thousands of people in Africa without a country to which they belong. Statelessness and discriminatory citizenship practices underlie and exacerbate tensions in many regions of the continent, according to this report by the Open Society Institute.

Citizenship Law in Africa is a comparative study by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Africa Governance Monitoring and Advocacy Project. It 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 legal 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 describes how stateless Africans are systematically exposed to human rights abuses: they can neither vote nor stand for public office; they cannot enroll their children in school, travel freely, or own property; they cannot work for the government.

Contents

• Summary
• International norms on citizenship
• Citizenship under colonial rule
• The basis of citizenship law today
• Right to a nationality
• Citizenship by descent
• Racial and ethnic discrimination
• Gender discrimination
• Proof of nationality
• Dual citizenship
• Citizenship by naturalisation
• Citizenship requirements for public office
• Rights for the African diaspora
• Loss and deprivation of citizenship
• Right to identity documents and passports
• Citizenship as a “durable solution” for refugees
• Appendix: Legal sources
• Index

List of Tables

• Table 1: Countries providing a right to a nationality
• Table 2: Right to citizenship by descent
• Table 3: Right to pass citizenship to a spouse
• Table 4: Countries permitting and prohibiting dual citizenship for adults
• Table 5: Right to acquire citizenship as an adult by naturalisation or registration/declaration
• Table 6: Criteria for loss of citizenship

The complete report, summary and recommendations (in English and French), and individual tables are available for download below.

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