UNHCR Campaign to End Statelessness Update July – September 2024
Published: 6/Jan/2025
Source: UNHCR
Highlights
• The League of Arab States launched the Arab Declaration on Belonging and Legal Identity to address issues of conflict, displacement, and statelessness by strengthening birth registration systems and advancing legal identity rights, with a particular focus on women’s rights.
• Mali reviewed and updated its National Action Plan to combat statelessness, introducing a new four-year strategy to tackle the issue more effectively.
Implementation of the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness
Extracts relevant to Africa
Action 1: Resolve existing major situations of statelessness
From 11 to 13 September, in Mali, UNHCR and the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights organized a workshop to review and update the National Action Plan to combat statelessness. The workshop provided an opportunity for the Inter-Ministerial Committee on statelessness to evaluate the initial action plan developed under the #IBelong Campaign, which concluded this year. As a result, a new four-year national action plan has been developed to guide future efforts to end statelessness.
Action 7: Ensure birth registration for the prevention of statelessness
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Interinstitutional technical committee to combat statelessness registered 10,800 children through the suppletive judgment procedure, including 3,300 children in Kasai Central, 5,000 in South Kivu, and 2,500 in North Kivu. This registration campaign will continue in October in the provinces of Tanganyika, Ituri, and North Kivu.
Action 8: Issue nationality documentation to those with entitlement to it
From July to September, in Burkina Faso, UNHCR and the General Directorate for the modernization of civil status worked together to issue civil documentation to internally displaced persons. Across eight regions, a total of 2,675 civil documents were distributed. These efforts included the transcription of 1,810 declaratory judgments into the civil registry for birth certificates, the issuance of 388 national identity cards by the National Identification Office, and the distribution of 477 nationality certificates by judicial authorities.
From July to September, in Mozambique, UNHCR partnered with the Catholic University of Mozambique, the Provincial services of justice
and labour, and the Provincial services of civil identification to issue birth certificates and identity documents to 1,613 individuals, including 976 children, in Nampula.
From 5 July to 20 September, in Niger, Committee for emergency aid and development (CIAUD-Canada) identified and referred 3,090 cases of individuals at risk of statelessness to civil registry services. In total, 6,427 individuals—refugees, IDPs, returnees, and host populations—were identified. 2,779 individuals accessed birth certificates, and 289 timely birth certificates, along with marriage and death certificates, were distributed. In collaboration with IRC-Rescue, mobile court hearings resolved 5,196 overdue birth certificates in several communes. 893 children without birth certificates were identified for regularization in Niamey. On 9 August, a joint mission supported mobile court
hearings to issue national identity cards to 1,200 IDPs in Guidan Sori. Additionally, 30 awareness-raising sessions on statelessness prevention
reached 1,633 individuals in Maradi.
Action 9: Accede to the UN Statelessness Conventions
On 24 July, in Cameroon, the Head of State signed Decree No.2024/333, finalizing the domestic process for the country’s accession to the UN
1954 Convention relating to the status of stateless persons and the 1961 Convention on the reduction of statelessness. The deposit of the instruments of accession is still pending.
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