By Roger A. Agana<\/p>\n
Ghana\u2019s Constitution grants men and women equal rights to pass citizenship to their children. In practice, thousands of Ghanaians still struggle to prove it. NewsGhana spoke with Cassadee Yan, author of \u201cThe Gendered Politics of Belonging: Patriarchy, Nationality Law, and Second-Class Citizenship\u201d (Common Ground Research Networks), about where that gap comes from and what closes it. The interview follows NewsGhana\u2019s earlier feature, \u201cBorder Citizens: Ghana\u2019s Invisible Communities Without Proof of Belonging,\u201d which documented residents near the Burkina Faso border unable to secure a Ghana Card despite being born and raised in the country.<\/p>\n
Ghana has formal legal equality in transmitting citizenship. Where does the gap with lived citizenship show up?<\/p>\n
Under Article 6(2) of the 1992 Constitution, a person born in or outside Ghana is a citizen at birth if either parent or grandparent is or was Ghanaian. That part is gender-neutral. But Article 7, which governs registration through marriage, is not fully symmetrical: a foreign man applying through marriage to a Ghanaian woman must prove the marriage was entered in good faith and must permanently reside in Ghana, conditions not expressly imposed on a foreign wife.<\/p>\n
The more widespread gap, though, is administrative rather than legal. A person can be Ghanaian under the Constitution and still struggle to get a Ghana Card, passport or birth certificate because of missing records, inconsistent names or dates, or difficulty proving a relationship to a Ghanaian parent or grandparent. That person is undocumented, or has undetermined nationality. Under the international legal definition, they are not automatically stateless, a stateless person is someone no state considers a national under the operation of its law.<\/p>\n
Does statelessness risk differ for children of Ghanaian mothers versus fathers?<\/p>\n
Legally, no \u2014 either parent can transmit citizenship. The differences show up in evidence, not entitlement. A child relying on a Ghanaian father must establish paternity, which becomes harder if the father is absent, deceased or uncooperative, or if paternity is disputed. In cross-border families, problems also arise when a birth happened abroad, was registered late, or when documents record only one parent\u2019s nationality. The risk isn\u2019t that mothers have weaker transmission rights, it\u2019s that no nationality can be effectively established on either side.<\/p>\n