Claim for British Overseas Citizenship made by UK-born child of Northern Rhodesian parents rejected by High Court

The High Court has dismissed a claim for a declaration that a woman was a British Overseas Citizen on the basis that her parents were born in Northern Rhodesia. The case is Sinkala v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWHC 59 (KB).

These cases tend to both complex and highly niche, but in brief, the claimant’s parents were born in 1958 and 1959 in what was then called Northern Rhodesia but is now Zambia. Before Zambian independence, her parents held the status of British Protected Persons.

The claimant brought a judicial review asserting that they were also Citizens of the UK and Colonies and did not lose this status on independence. This meant that they became British Overseas Citizens and that she then acquired that status when born in the UK in 1989 because without this she would have been stateless.

The court held:

It is an essential element in the Claimant’s claim to be a British Overseas Citizen that her parents remained CUKCs after Zambian independence and subsequently became British Overseas Citizens. She has not established that element. Instead, as a consequence of Motala, the position as a matter of law is that the Claimant’s parents became Zambian citizens on 24^th October 1964 and any status they had as CUKCs ceased automatically on the same date. It follows that the Claimant’s contention that she is a British Overseas Citizen by reason of a status derived from that of her parents must fail.

The court also held that the claimant had not discharged the burden of showing that she was born stateless and that the claim would have failed even if she had been able to establish that her parents had become British Overseas Citizens.