From living in the shadows, to freedom: Lessons from Kenya’s work towards ending ‘statelessness’

Nosizi Dube beams with pride as she clutches her newly issued Kenyan passport.

For many, obtaining a passport might be a mundane task, but for 24-year-old Dube, who was born into the stateless Shona community in Kenya, it symbolises the end of a gruelling journey towards recognition and the beginning of new opportunities.

“Being stateless is like you don’t exist. You look like everyone else, but because you have no identification documents you live in the shadows, unable to do basic things like go to school or even get a mobile phone number,” Dube told Context.

“Getting recognition as a Kenyan citizen has given me visibility and rights just like everyone else. I feel like I am free, like the chains of statelessness have been broken.”

Now a trailblazer as the first Shona woman in Kenya to graduate from university, Dube hopes to go to Geneva next week to attend a major intergovernmental meeting marking the end of a global campaign to end statelessness within a decade.

The #IBelong campaign’s success varies across the world, and while millions remain stateless, the campaign has been a beacon of hope in Kenya, with thousands of stateless people from the Shona, Makonde and Pemba communities gaining recognition.

More than 50% of the 20,000 people who registered as stateless in Kenya in 2014 have been granted citizenship, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

Samwel Okute, the UNHCR’s senior protection associate for statelessness, attributes Kenya’s success to initiatives ranging from awareness campaigns and community mobilisation to advocacy, legal reforms and strong political will.

“We have seen tremendous progress in Kenya. The name ‘stateless’ was not even known in Kenya 10 years ago,” said Okute.

“The Kenyan government has shown commitment to amend laws, and there have been progressive efforts to raise awareness and improve data collection, but there are still communities that remain left out in Kenya, and the rest of the world,” he said.

‘Milestone’

More than 4.4 million people across the world do not have a nationality, according to UNHCR data, although experts say the figure is likely to be significantly higher as some countries with large stateless populations do not provide data.

People can become stateless due to a host of complex historical, social and legal reasons – including migration, flawed citizenship laws, and ethnic or gender discrimination.

In Kenya, communities affected by statelessness include the Shona, Makonde and Pemba, as well as people of Burundian and Rwandan descent.

The Shona migrated from Zimbabwe and Zambia in the 1960s as Christian missionaries during the colonial period. While the Makonde arrived from Mozambique to work in the 1930s.

However, when Kenya gained independence in 1963, these communities ended up without a nationality.

The Pemba, a fishing community from Zanzibar who settled along Kenya’s coast, were among those unable to register as Kenyan citizens after independence.

For decades, these communities lived on the margins – generations deprived of basic rights because they lacked legal documents such as birth certificates or national identity cards.

They could not go to school, visit a hospital, get a job, obtain a mobile SIM card, open a bank account, register a business, or rent or buy a house.

Many pay middlemen to use their names to obtain fake IDs, register for exams or obtain a mobile phone number.

“A single document has the power to determine the fate of your entire life,” said Dube, recounting how she was prevented from sitting her primary school exams because she did not have a birth certificate.

Following the launch of the #IBelong campaign in 2014, UNHCR partnered with charities in Kenya to understand how many people were stateless and support their path to recognition.

This has involved years of outreach work – from awareness campaigns to encourage people to register as stateless so data could be collected, to organising and mobilising communities to petition parliament.

In 2016, Kenya granted citizenship to more than 1,100 people from the Makonde community. Recognition of 1,670 Shona people and 7,000 Pemba people followed in 2020 and 2022 respectively.

Pemba activist Barke Hamisi, 30, said citizenship had brought big changes to her community.

Born stateless in Malindi on Kenya's coast, Hamisi had to interrupt her education due to a lack of documentation.

She now works as a paralegal for Haki Africa, a Kenyan charity working to end statelessness.

“Getting recognition was a milestone for us,” said Hamisi.

"Children can now go to school, youth are now considered for employment opportunities, and women can now go to hospital and give birth because they can produce a national identity card."

African progress

Elsewhere in Africa, hundreds of thousands remain stateless with large populations in Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe.

Although Kenya leads the way in combating statelessness, there is a growing continent-wide commitment to resolving the problem.

In Ivory Coast, 16,000 descendants of migrants have had their nationality confirmed, but progress is very slow given the country has more than 900,000 stateless people.

Liberia has amended its nationality law to grant women and men equal rights to confer nationality on their children, while reforms in Rwanda have helped to facilitate naturalisation for stateless people.

Last year, Tanzania granted nationality to more than 3,000 stateless people in Zanzibar.

The African Union has also adopted a protocol to eradicate statelessness and advance inclusion for stateless people.

But the journey to recognition is fraught with hurdles.

South African lawyer Christy Chitengu, 25, was born to undocumented Zimbabweans and only discovered she was stateless in high school when she needed to register for exams.

Her quest for recognition was tough, involving a court case against South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs.

Despite delays, scepticism and xenophobia, Chitengu finally obtained nationality in August 2023, while pregnant.

“South Africa is a difficult place and I guess that’s why it’s hard to get documented,” said Chitengu who has started a YouTube channel to educate people on statelessness.

“There’s generational statelessness so if I didn’t get documented, my child was not going to be documented,” she said.

The UNHCR says many older South Africans also lack documentation as a result of apartheid-era policies that only required civil and birth registration for white citizens.

This legacy has left descendants struggling to access identity documents and rendered them stateless.

But after gaining citizenship, formerly stateless people still face a host of challenges due to years of marginalisation. Many struggle with a lack of skills, the cost of education and discrimination in the job market and in accessing services.

“I think the general perception is that you get your piece of paper, you get your ID, and everything is perfect,” said Andrew Ochola, Haki Africa's acting executive director.

“But uplifting stateless communities cannot happen overnight. There are many challenges that persist,” he said.

This article first appeared on Context, powered by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.