South Africa’s implementation of human rights law on the right to acquisition of nationality

Abstract

Global and African regional human rights law provides for the right of a child to a nationality.However, to address evolving causes of statelessness worldwide, global, and African regional human rights jurisprudence is developing to ensure that everyone has a right to a nationality. South Africa is yet to ratify the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness which are key to addressing statelessness. South Africa has ratified a number of core United Nations and African regional human rights treaties on this right. This study finds that despite South Africa’s ratification of these global and African regional human rights treaties on the right to a nationality, there are still challenges and gaps in South Africa’s nationality legislation which violates South Africa’s human rights obligation on the right to a nationality. Since birth registration is required in South Africa’s citizenship legislation before South African citizenship is conferred, this study examines South Africa’s current birth registration legislation and the challenges that are barriers to the acquisition of South African nationality. Since South Africa does not have a Statelessness Determination Procedure (SDP), a gap in its current nationality legislation, this study recommends practices that advance human rights norms and principles from the SDP of countries such as the United Kingdom (UK) and other African countries such as Côte d’Ivoire which South Africa can adopt in developing its SDP. This study also recommends good practices South Africa can adopt in its nationality legislation and birth registration legislation from countries such as Cameroon, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea, Eswatini, Rwanda and Lesotho.