Statelessness
By Taiye Elebiyo-Edeni/Uche Bibilari
Abuja, Oct. 17, 2019 (NAN) The Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies said on Thursday that the emplacement of a data bank and the enforcement of Civil registration in West Africa could go a long way toward helping to tackle statelessness within the sub-region.
Director General of the institute, Prof. Muhammed Ladan, made this known in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja after a meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and ECOWAS Ambassadors.
The meeting was convened with a view to addressing the issue of statelessness.
Ladan said that ECOWAS needed to work closely with UNHCR to develop a standard framework for the collection of data that would help member states comprehensively document the situation of statelessness in their respective countries.
According to him, lacking access to proof of nationality is the main risk factor that continues to create new cases of statelessness in the region.
“There is a need for ECOWAS member states, governments, and polices makers, Civil Society Organisations, the academia, the media to join the campaign against statelessness in the West Africa sub-region.
“There is actually a rough estimate by the UNHCR that at least one million West Africans are stateless or at risk of statelessness.
“So the challenge for us in the sub-region is for us to actually address three key issues.
“The need to systematically put a data bank on ground and a mechanism to generate data, about the causes of statelessness, persons that are at risk of statelessness and then strategies to address reduction of statelessness if we cant wipe it out completely.
“Birth registration is key in the prevention of statelessness as it provides children with access to proof of nationality.
“Nevertheless, birth registration rates are critically low in many parts of West Africa,” he said.
He added that migrants were at risk of statelessness because migration might be voluntary or forced.
He said that most of the countries in the sub-region had experienced one form of violent conflict or the other, which had led to the displacement of people who never planned to migrate to other places.
According to him, some migrants are sometimes caught up at border points and sometimes lose all documents that are supposed to indicate their identity of country.
He urged the ECOWAS authority and governments to consider giving identity cards to such categories of persons to enable them to have access to social services. (NAN)
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Edited by Emmanuel Yashim