Investigating the right to nationality of stateless children: a case study of refugees in Kabalagala and Kisenyi slums Kampala Uganda

Abstract

The major purpose of the study was to establish the extent to which Ugandan legal frameworks support children born by refugee parents to gain Ugandan nationality. The study was set out to establish the status determination of stateless children in Uganda, establish the challenges that are encountered by refugee parents in seeking citizenship for their children, and evaluate the legal and institutional frameworks in place that govern refugees and establish the level of awareness of such frameworks from a human rights perspective. This study was qualitative and undertook a case study approach to gather data on stateless children in Uganda. Questionnaires, key informant interviews and focused group discussions were applied in the data collection process. The research respondents for the questionnaire survey were refugee parents living in Kampala slums of Kabalagala and Kisenyi, these were specifically parents with children that have no Ugandan nationality (Stateless). A child as defined by the Constitution of Uganda is any person below the age of 18 years (National Child Policy, 2020). The methods of data collection included questionnaire surveys, FGDs, KIIs and document review. Data analysis involved the examination of data collected from the field to draw references and conclusions. Given the fact that the study was purely qualitative involving semi structured interviews, key informant interviews and focus group discussions, responses were transcribed from the local language to English. Data was examined while applying a thematic analysis so that patterns in form of themes across the data sets were guided by the study objectives. This process is borrowed from Hartman, (2016) who particularly made a study on youth participation in peace building in Gulu District, Northern Uganda. The survey questionnaires were analyzed using SSPS software which gave the researcher logical statistical analysis through utilizing graphs, pie charts and tabular forms for data presentation (Arkkelin, Daniel,2014). The major findings from the study were that Majority of the interviewed refugee mothers had lived in Uganda for more than 5 years, giving birth to stateless children who were not registered at birth as one of the rights of every person living in the country. Secondly, there was Ignorance of the laws that support stateless children to gain nationality and Limited successful stories in acquiring citizenship from refugee mothers had been registered and shared. However, It was noted that most of the respondents were familiar with the OPM and UNHCR policies and guidelines on refugees and stateless children that sensitized them on most of the policies and legal frameworks on how to acquire Ugandan nationality. Although Uganda has an open-door policy to refugees and has enacted several international treaties to address statelessness, there is persistent increase in statelessness of children in Uganda following the legal gaps in its national laws. The study therefore concludes that although Uganda has interests in refugees, it has played an insignificant role to ensure that the issue of statelessness is fully addressed.