South Africa Multi-Country Office - Stateless persons in Southern Africa

2021

A key component of the statelessness strategy is to enhance active engagement with government and other stakeholders to support the realisation of the pledges made at the Global Refugee Forum and the High-Level Segment on Statelessness in 2019. Working with partners, there are indicators and evidence of stateless groups and those at risk of statelessness in Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Namibia and South Africa. There is little evidence of stateless persons or at-risk groups in the Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles. 
 
SAMCO supported implementation of the #IBelong Campaign and the Global Action Plan to End Statelessness: 2014 – 2024, with a view to building strategic partnerships to improve coordination of activities, complementarity of funding, greater impact of interventions and more cost-effective approaches. Across the region, UNHCR supported governments in the identification of stateless persons and those at risk of statelessness, advocating for solutions, and carrying out activities aimed at developing partnerships with civil society organizations, NGOs, academia, human rights institutions, government statelessness focal points and relevant departments and UN sister agencies. These partnerships aimed to strengthen the discourse around civil registration, vital statistics and immigration, to assist the governments to design and implement national censuses.