An overview of the nationality and citizenship laws of Zambia

Abstract

It is generally recognised that every sovereign State is competent to decide which persons are,or qualify to be ,its members.One form of such membership is citizenship or nationality.At times , one's citizenship of a particular State may be in issue.This has been the case in Zambia where citizenship of certain persons has been in issue to the extent that some of them have been declared or rendered "stateless".We have also noticed that aliens (non-citizens) have been deported from Zambia for several reasons. In this regard,questions may be posed: (i)Who is a Zambian citizen? (ii)How does one acquire Zambian citizenship? (iii)Under which circumstances can a Zambian citizen lose his citizenship of Zambia? (iv)How can a purported Zambian citizen become "stateless"? (v)Which fundamental rights can be exercised by citizens and non-citizens?,and (v)Under what circumstances and for which reasons can a non-citizen be deported form Zambia?This work ,therefore, is a modest attempt to provide some answers to the above questions.The author would like to mention that personnel involved in administration of citizenship laws were very unwilling to be interviewed.