People line up at the department of nationality, passport, and immigration in Juba. (Courtesy).

European Union’s deputy head of mission in South Sudan has encouraged the government to make nationality registration affordable and accessible to its citizens to combat statelessness.

Lothar Jasckhe – speaking in Juba at the launch of nationality documentation and mitigation of risk of statelessness – noted the incrementally high legal registration cost which an ordinary citizen can barely afford.

Jasckhe urges the government to reduce the fees to enable the citizens to acquire citizenship and record their data, saying it is critical for equal resource distribution in the country.

He appeals to the government’s directorate of civil registry, nationality and passport to operationalize its systems in a way that ensures that South Sudanese are free from the risk of being stateless.

“I would like to call upon the government and the relevant actors to operationalize the civil registry and make civil documentation accessible to all citizens,” said Mr. Jasckhe.

“The second issue is to make nationality acquisition affordable to all citizens. When we started the project in 2022, the cost was already high. The cost for the nationality certificate ID came to about $2. Now it is $5. And I think that’s a lot of money, particularly for people who are not paid salaries.”

On her part, Minster of Interior Angelina Teny admitted the dysfunctional systems for civil registry that remained unintegrated, making it hard for citizens to easily get legally registered

She underscored that despite the challenges facing the Directorate of Civil Registry, the ministry is working hard to ensure that at least an average South Sudanese registered.

“We are committed to ensuring that every citizen in this country must receive some kind of documentation,” she said.

“Now, the Directorate for Civil Registry and Immigration is working very hard, not only on providing the national certificates, but also we are looking at the registry of birth and death.”

Angelina said the civil registry system was in place sometimes back, but added that it is currently limited to those residing in towns due to inaccessibility of remote areas.

“We have the majority of our citizens in rural settings and they are not reachable. So people born in towns, of course, would have records, but the system is not integrated. And this will also support ensuring issues of statelessness are avoided.”

The launch of the nationality documentation and mitigation of the risk of statelessness is to equip officers to employ integrated approach to enhance protection, resilience and solutions in South Sudan.