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Zambia’s apex court makes landmark citizenship ruling

Publish date: 04 May 2026
Issue Number: 1175
Diary: IBA Legalbrief Africa
Category: Constitutional

The Constitutional Court in Zambia has just delivered a major new decision that will affect many thousands of refugees living in that country. In their unanimous decision the judges held that provisions of the Citizenship Act, effectively preventing refugees and their children from ever gaining citizenship, were unconstitutional. As Carmel Rickard explains in her A Matter of Justice column on the Legalbrief site, that’s because the statute imposed more conditions on acquiring citizenship than were laid down in the Constitution.

A Matter of Justice

Zambia judgment

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