Ghana's golden jubilee: Africa's citizenship

By Tajudeen Abdulraheem, Dismas Nkunda, & Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

(March 7, 2007) ON January 24, 1980, Nigeria's President, Alhaji Shehu Shagari expelled to Chad the Majority Leader of the Opposition-controlled state legislature of the North-Eastern State of Borno, Alhaji Shugaba Abdulrahman Darman, alleging that he was Chadian not Nigerian. He wasn't. In 1995, Zambia's septuagenarian founding President, Kenneth Kaunda was stripped of his citizenship by his successor. In the same year, Cote d'Ivoire's former Prime Minister, Alassane Ouattara, was similarly stripped of his Ivoirien citizenship. In 2001, Tanzania threw out its leading journalist and media proprietor, Jenerali Ulimwengu. At the end of 2006, it was the turn of the publisher of the only existing independent newspaper in Zimbabwe, Trevor Ncube to be rendered stateless by his country.

On March 6, 1957, the independence of Ghana promised for all Africans and our communities a new era of citizenship in full dignity and equality with the rest of humanity. 50 years later, these examples testify that this promise remains unfulfilled. African governments remain unable or unwilling to fully assure, respect and guarantee effective citizenship in our continent. Africa's peoples did not fight for independence to be reduced to non-persons or second class citizens by our own governments.

Perhaps the biggest problem facing Africa today is the challenge of guaranteeing effective citizenship, enabling Africans within our continent to co-exist, pursue livelihoods, move freely, and participate in the government of our countries without arbitrary interference. For the average African, irrespective of country, these basic elements of effective citizenship do not exist.

Thousands of Africans daily join the millions of victims of statelessness and arbitrary denial of citizenship in our continent. Although each case of statelessness or denial of citizenship produces unique experiences of victimisation, common patterns are clear. These include the stripping of citizenship status and rights resulting in statelessness; forced expulsion or forced population transfers; elimination of minority groups through mass de-nationalisation, followed - in many cases - by targeted killings of members of the affected groups; persecution of vocal opponents or critics of incumbent regimes; and refusal to recognise or accord the rights of particular (groups of) citizens in the absence of documentary proof.

In several cases, governments make such proof extremely difficult or even impossible to obtain. For example, Kenyan Somalis and Nubians in Kenya are required, in order to prove their citizenship, to produce birth certificates of their grandparents, nearly all of whom were born when there were no birth records.

Violations of citizenship rights are truly indiscriminate. Around Africa, there are millions more who are too poor to challenge this violation or too unknown to register in the frightening statistics of the stateless. Affected populations include: a majority of the continent's estimated migrant and pastoralist population of 17.3 million persons representing the biggest population of persons at risk of statelessness in the world; an estimated 30 per cent of Cote d'Ivoire's 17.5 million people de-nationalised by the Ivoirite-inspired amendments to Cote d'Ivoire's citizenship laws between 1995-2000; more than 1.5 million Banyamulenge (Tutsis) of Eastern Congo, whose citizenship in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains disputed, fuelling a bloody war; another 1.5 million Zimbabwean mine and commercial farm workers born of parents descended from Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia whose nationality was arbitrarily cancelled by the government of Zimbabwe in 2001; and hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians of Eritrean-descent who had their Ethiopian nationality cancelled and nationality documents destroyed before their forced expulsion to Eritrea in 1998-1999 and hundreds of thousands of black Mauritanians expelled to Senegal in the 1990s. The list is endless.

International law prohibits statelessness. The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights does not specifically recognise a right to nationality but implicitly prohibits arbitrary and discriminatory interference with it. The pattern is clear. Many governments across the continent daily strip certain people - usually political opponents, members of minority communities, or vocal critics - of their citizenship. For millions of our people, citizenship is no longer a right; it is now a privilege enjoyed at the pleasure of government of the day.

Statelessness and mass denial of citizenship pose a clear and present danger to regional peace and security in Africa. Indeed many of Africa's current wars, including those in Cote d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Darfur region of Sudan, are linked directly to citizenship-related persecution and exclusion. The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia involved cancellation of nationality and tit-for-tat forced population transfers. The 1994 Rwandan Genocide is the logical extreme in Africa's recent history of what happens when governments choose to arbitrarily put their own people beyond reach of citizenship.

Members of pastoralist and border populations around our continent, such as the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, the Somalis of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, and the Foullahs and Mandingo of West Africa have been rendered stateless because they straddle the borders of multiple African countries but are unable effectively to claim the nationality of any country.

These examples easily demonstrate that statelessness and citizenship are together the most serious human security and human rights problems in Africa today. Statelessness and the arbitrary denial of citizenship violate human dignity, undermine the integrity of government and its institutions, dislocate families, destroy the livelihoods of those affected, render the victims open to further abuses of their rights and lead to war. That millions of Africans have to build their families and contribute to their communities in such conditions of unlawful persecution and uncertainty prevents free and productive economic development, making nonsense of public commitments to fighting poverty by Africa's leaders.

The causes and consequences of statelessness and mass denial of citizenship in Africa clearly transcend national borders. One country cannot, without reference to another unilaterally determine that a person hitherto known to be its national belongs to the second country. The history and shared experiences of African countries make a compelling and urgent case for a regional response to statelessness and citizenship.

To end the pandemic of statelessness and denial of citizenship in Africa, a regional treaty is needed at the level of the African Union to guarantee the right to citizenship and prohibit statelessness in Africa. Such a treaty will establish principles and rules to eliminate arbitrariness and discrimination in access to as well as proof, acquisition, enjoyment, and loss of citizenship rights on our continent.

At the minimum, it would guarantee a legally enforceable right to citizenship for persons or members of all races and ethnic groups found in Africa, prohibit statelessness and measures that create it, propose concrete measures for resolving disputes from acquisition or loss of citizenship, place the burden of proof on the state in situations of disputed citizenship, and provide for interim remedies pending resolution of citizenship disputes. Even more importantly, on the Golden Jubilee of Ghana's seminal independence, African governments must renew the promise of independence: to ensure for our people, full citizenship in full dignity.

Abdulraheem, Nkunda and Odinkalu Co-Chair the Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative (CRAI). CRAI is a joint project of the Global Pan-African Movement (PAM), International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI), and the Open Society Justice Initiative.

This article was originally published in the Guardian Newspaper in Nigeria

http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/editorial_opinion/article04