Statelessness in Southern Africa

The report identifies colonial history, border changes, and poor civil registry systems as primary drivers of statelessness in Southern Africa. It warns that some states are increasingly using the deprivation of nationality as a tool for migration management and political exclusion. The document highlights the critical role of birth registration and the persistence of gender discrimination in nationality laws, while detailing case studies from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Madagascar, and Angola to illustrate these systemic failures.

• Statelessness in Southern Africa is primarily caused by colonial history, border changes, migration, inadequate civil registry systems, and discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, and gender.
• Four countries in Southern Africa—Zimbabwe, South Africa, Madagascar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—are among the nine African nations with the largest stateless populations.
• There is a growing trend of states using statelessness and the stripping of citizenship as punitive measures or tools to manage and deter migration.
• Gender discrimination remains a root cause of childhood statelessness; eight African countries, including eSwatini, Burundi, Liberia, Libya, Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan, and Togo, have laws preventing women from passing nationality to children on an equal basis with men.
• Lack of birth registration is a primary driver of statelessness in Southern Africa, as it is the essential life event for determining nationality and accessing all other identity documents.
• In Zimbabwe, citizenship laws have been weaponized for political repression, specifically targeting farmworkers of foreign descent to prohibit their political participation.
• South Africa faces significant gaps between its progressive legal frameworks and administrative practices, with proposed regulations for the Births and Deaths Registration Act risking the statelessness of children born to foreign parents.
• In Madagascar, the Karana people—a Muslim minority of Indo-Pakistani origin—remain largely stateless despite multiple generations of residency, often facing discriminatory administrative hurdles.
• The cessation of refugee status for Angolans in South Africa has left many individuals and their children at risk of statelessness, particularly those who have no remaining ties to Angola.
• Statelessness imposes vast societal costs, including hindering economic development, creating public health risks by limiting access to immunizations, and threatening regional security through disenfranchisement and exclusion.

APA

Mbiyozo, A.-N. (2019). Statelessness in Southern Africa. Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/sar32.pdf

Chicago

Mbiyozo, Aimée-Noël. Statelessness in Southern Africa. Institute for Security Studies, 2019. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/sar32.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Mbiyozo |first1=Aimée-Noël |title=Statelessness in Southern Africa |publisher=Institute for Security Studies |date=November 2019 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/sar32.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{mbiyozo2019statelessness, author = {Mbiyozo, Aimée-Noël}, title = {{Statelessness in Southern Africa}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2019}, month = nov, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/sar32.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }