The determination of Somali citizenship is complicated by the fact that Somalia has lacked functioning governing institutions for the past decades.
However, citizenship in Somalia is nominally regulated by the country’s 1962 citizenship law, which provides that citizenship can be provided to anyone whose father is Somali or who is ethnically Somali and who renounces claim to any other nationality. In practice, Somalis may in some cases be considered stateless as a result of the lack of capacity of the Somali state to offer protection. (See De Jure Statelessness in the Real World: Applying the Prato Summary Conclusions). While the 1962 law does not permit dual nationality, the provisional constitution of 2012 does allow Somalis to hold another nationality.
In addition, the region of Somaliland adopted legislation relating to citizenship in 2002. This legislation confers citizenship on persons whose father was a descendent of a person resident on the territory in 1960. However, the effectiveness of this law depends in part on the extent to which Somaliland is recognized as a state, or not.
Nationality laws which do not grant women equality with men in conferring nationality to their children are a cause of statelessness and a concern for UNHCR under its mandate to prevent and reduce statelessness. Since 2012, UNHCR has issued an…
In their impoverished communities in Uganda, the answers hinged on the fact that one girl had a birth certificate and the other didn’t. Police foiled the planned marriage after locating paperwork that proved the first girl was not 18 as…
British Somali MPs have the highest number of lawmakers in the Somali Parliament with 29 MPs followed by Somali Americans at 22 and Kenyan Somalis at 10, a report by Wakiil.org has indicated. The number of Somali MPs with dual…
By Michael Walls On independence in 1960, Somalia was widely regarded as “the African electoral democracy most likely to succeed”. The people were (mostly) united by language, religion and culture, with few of the inconvenient ethnic divisions that were meant…
Dadaab, in eastern Kenya, is the largest refugee camp in the world sheltering thousands of Somalis. Ben Rawlence, author of a new book, City of Thorns, chronicles the lives of people who live there. More.
How do you hold an election without registering voters? That is the question confronting Somali politicians—as well as hordes of diplomats, NGOs and other international hangers-on—trying to create a functional government in Somalia, a country that has been without a…
To most Americans, citizenship, like DNA, seems like something a parent passes to a child without thought or effort. And indeed, for fathers around the world, that’s almost universally true. But one-in-seven countries currently have laws or policies prohibiting or…
Since the onset of Somaliland’s independence, the demand of civil registration and National ID seemed to be a key priority where the President of Somaliland has recently appointed two committees (steering committee and task force) to implement National Identity Card…
Article 8. The People and the Citizenship (1) The people of the Federal Republic of Somalia are one, are indivisible and consists of all the citizens. (2) There shall be only one Somali citizenship, and the House of the People…
by Laura Bingham, Julia Harrington Reddy & Sebastian Kohn Open Society Justice Initiative This Open Society Justice Initiative paper examines the definition of a stateless person under international law and the implications this definition has for victims of statelessness around the world. In May 2010,…