Book review: Nigeria: a new history of a turbulent centuryby Richard Bourne

Richard Bourne has provided an excellent overview of the main political events of Nigeria’s first hundred years, but no deeper analysis of the reasons for which Nigeria has stayed together, according to LSE’s Bronwen Manby

Important new guidelines on the right to birth registration and a nationality in Africa launched in Côte d’Ivoire

LSE’s Bronwen Manby welcomes a new African Charter which could have a major impact in ending statelessness for children born outside their country of origin

Citizenship and state succession in the Sudans

Bronwen Manby is senior programme adviser on Africa with the Open Society Foundations, and author of two books on nationality law in Africa. She is an expert adviser on citizenship for UNHCR’s Khartoum office and wrote an article on citizenship issues and the options for resolving them in advance of the secession of South Sudan. She is currently on sabbatical leave, based in the Centre for Human Rights at LSE. This post also appears on the Open Society Foundations blog

Nationality and statelessness among persons of Western Saharan origin

The territory of Western Sahara has a highly anomalous position in international law. It is categorised by the United Nations as a ‘non-self-governing territory’, but, unlike other similar territories, the state in effective control of the territory (Morocco) is not recognised as governing lawfully. The nationality status of those with a connection to the territory is thus complex. This article concludes that, with exceptions, those people who were habitually resident in the territory at the time of Moroccan occupation and who have remained there, or who have returned to the Moroccan-administered part of the territory, and whom Morocco considers to be nationals, may be recognised as such by other states. Those who did not remain and have not returned cannot be considered to be Moroccan nationals nor required to seek or accept Moroccan nationality. If they have not acquired any other nationality, they must be considered to be stateless persons

The Right to Nationality and the Secession of South Sudan

In January 2011, after years of civil war, the people of South Sudan voted overwhelmingly for separation from the Republic of Sudan. The Republic of South Sudan obtained its independence six months later, on July 9, 2011.As part of the process of separation of the two states, people of South Sudanese origin who are habitually resident (in some cases for many decades) in what remains the Republic of Sudan are being stripped of their Sudanese nationality and livelihoods. This is happening irrespective of the relative strength of their connections to either state, and their views on which state they would wish to belong to.This summary of a forthcoming detailed legal commentary from the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA) looks at the issues created by the respective nationality laws of the two Sudans. It makes recommendations aimed at averting a crisis of statelessness that will affect over half a million people, now unfolding against the background of open conflict between the two countrie

Legal identity for all and statelessness: opportunity and threat at the junction of public and private international law

This article considers the impact of Target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals (‘SDGs’), ‘to provide legal identity for all, including birth registration’ on the objective of eradicating statelessness. This SDG Target has given a significant boost to initiatives for the strengthening of civil registration and identification systems, supported by the United Nations and World Bank. Yet its impact on the resolution of statelessness is not clear, because of the immense complexity of the definition of ‘legal identity’. Proposed definitions, adopted after the target was established, fail to take on board the challenges involved in cross-border recognition of civil status documents and the determination of nationality of a child for parents who hold no documents. The article concludes that SDG Target 16.9 is both an opportunity and a threat. If the objective of providing universal ‘legal identity’ is to have a positive impact for stateless persons there is a need for new engagement with the regulation of civil status in private international law, and new insistence in public international law on legal frameworks that facilitate recognition and registration of the different elements of a person’s identity, including nationality, even and especially where they are officially in doubt. Short cuts in this process risk long delays

Citizenship Law in Africa

Describes the citizenship laws, practices, and discrimination in African countries that exacerbate widespread statelessness, human rights abuses, and intercommunal, racial, and ethnic conflicts. Outlines international norms and makes recommendations

Book review - love does not win elections by Ayisha Osori

Bronwen Manby says this humorous book gives a unique insight into Nigerian politics

Questions of legal identity in the post-2015 development agenda

The UN has proposed that providing a “legal identity for all” is one of its Sustainable Development Goals, yet proposes to measure progress against this goal simply in terms of birth registration rates. Edgar A. Whitley and Bronwen Manby explore the complex relationship between birth registration and legal identity from a legal and management perspective. Edgar A. Whitley is an Associate Professor (Reader) of Information Systems at the LSE Department of Management and Bronwen Manby is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Centre for the Study of Human Rights

Preventing statelessness among migrants and refugees: birth registration and consular assistance in Egypt and Morocco

This paper presents a synthesis of research findings on the identification needs of Sub-Saharan African and other migrants and refugees in Egypt and Morocco, particularly focusing on children born outside the country of nationality of their parents. The paper sets out the legislative and regulatory frameworks in place for birth registration and issue of identity documents, and reports the findings of focus groups and interviews with migrants and refugees on the implementation of these frameworks in practice, highlighting obstacles to the registration of the births of children of foreign parents and the difficulties of obtaining documents from the consular authorities of the country of origin. The paper provides recommendations for legal and administrative reform in Egypt and Morocco, to ensure that both children and adults can have access to documents that officially confirm their nationality. The research is set within the context of international policy objectives and discussions on the provision of ‘legal identity to all’, highlighting the dangers of exclusion and statelessness if the obstacles identified by the report are not addressed. About the Author Bronwen Manby is Senior Policy Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Principal Investigator for the research project ‘Preventing Statelessness among Migrants in North Africa’. She has written extensively on nationality and statelessness in Africa