End statelessness- Groups urge African leaders

(KAMPALA, 19 February, 2007) Leading international and African advocacy groups today launched a campaign to end statelessness in Africa and the arbitrary denial and withdrawal of citizenship.

The campaign, the Citizenship Rights in Africa Initiative (CRAI), is a joint project of the Global Pan-African Movement, the International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI), and the Open Society Justice Initiative.

Speaking at the launch, Dismas Nkunda, Co-Director of IRRI said:  “CRAI is a necessary response to the biggest challenge facing Africa today – the challenge of enabling Africans to co-exist, pursue their livelihoods and participate in the government of our countries without arbitrary interference with their right to belong.” 

“We must stop foreignising Africans” said Dr. Tajudeen Abdulraheem, General Secretary of the Global Pan-African Movement. “50 years ago, on 6 March 1957, the independence of Ghana promised for all Africans a new era of citizenship in full dignity and equality with the rest of humanity. We did not fight for independence to be reduced to non-persons or second class citizens by our own governments.”

The launch of this campaign follows many recent high profile cases in which African governments have attempted to deprive well known citizens of their citizenship on political grounds. Recent victims of this trend include Zambia’s founding President, Kenneth Kaunda; Cote d’Ivoire’s former Prime Minister, Alassane Ouattara; Tanzania’s leading media proprietor, Jenerali Ulimwengu; and Trevor Ncube, the publisher of the only existing independent newspaper in Zimbabwe.

These prominent cases are only the tip of the iceberg of exclusion of millions of less well known Africans who are too poor to challenge those in power. Examples are many. Estimates put the number of pastoralist population of about 17.3 million people thought to be stateless in Africa. In 1981, the government of the then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) stripped the entire population of Tutsis in Eastern Congo of their citizenship. In the past decade, the governments of both Cote d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe have respectively de-nationalized an estimated 25% of their people.

“Tens of millions of Africans have been victims of the pandemic of statelessness and denial of citizenship. In terms of the number of people affected and the implications for peace and security, it is easily the most serious human security and human rights problem on the continent today” said Dr. Abdulraheem.

“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”, added Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, Senior Legal Officer of the Open Society Justice Initiative.

“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”

ENDS

Contacts:      Dismas Nkunda +256 782 310 404
                        Chidi Anselm Odinkalu +234 803 419 0668