The Supreme Court of Appeal will on Tuesday hear a case of an 8-year-old stateless child who was born in South Africa to Cuban parents. The Department of Home Affairs will be appealing against a judgment of the Pretoria High Court last year in which the child was declared to be a South African citizen in terms of section 2(2) of the South African Citizenship Act.The section was entered into the Act in order to protect children from statelessness. It provides SA citizenship to children born stateless in South Africa.Any person who is not recognised as a citizen by any country is a stateless person. This means that even though she is able to go to school‚ she would not be able to get her matric certificate because she does not have an identity document.The child became stateless because Cuban law does not allow children to obtain Cuban citizenship if they were born outside of Cuba to parents considered “permanent emigrants”‚ or Cubans who had lived outside of Cuba for more than 11 months.South African law also gives citizenship based on the South African citizenship of the parents.Because the child’s parents were Cuban‚ she could not be South African.Section 2(2) of the Citizenship Act gives SA citizenship to such children born in SA‚ but the department refused to implement the section leaving the child stateless for 8 years.Her mother‚ a civil engineer‚ was a candidate for a programme between South Africa and Cuba government for the housing department and was based in Cape Town with her husband.The couple had been married for eight years when she arrived in South Africa and could not have a child.Her mother said it was a miracle baby as she was 40 when the child was born.“She was born in September 2008 here in Cape Town. When she was born‚ we immediately thought she was Cuban because we are from Cuba‚” her mother said.Jacob van Garderen‚ national director of Lawyers for Human Rights‚ said the child’s case was an example of how a child could fall through the cracks of nationality laws‚ and citizenship and provisions.Arvind Gupta‚ senior regional protection officer at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees regional office for Southern Africa‚ said every individual must have a citizenship.“That is what links the person to his country‚ his community‚ his society. It basically is what contributes to the very identity of an individual‚” Gupta said...