Open Journal of Statistics, 2022, 12, 563-580 https://www.scirp.org/journal/ojs ISSN Online: 2161-7198 ISSN Print: 2161-718X DOI: 10.4236/ojs.2022.125034 Oct. 11, 2022 563 Open Journal of Statistics Classification of Stateless People through a Robust Nonparametric Kernel Discriminant Function Macdonald G. Obudho, George O. Orwa, Romanus O. Otieno, Festus A. Were Department of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya Abstract Statelessness is the absence of any Nationality. These include the Pemba, Shona, Galjeel, people of Burundi and Rwanda descent, and children born in Kenya to British Overseas Citizens after 1983. Frequently, they are not only undo- cumented but also often overlooked and not included in National Adminis- trative Registers. Accordingly, find it hard to participate in Social and Eco- nomic Affairs. There has been a major push by UNHCR and international partners to “map” the size of stateless populations and their demographic pro- file, as well as causes, potential solutions and human rights situation. One of the requirements by the UNHCR in their push is for countries to find a po- tential solution to statelessness which starts with classifying/associating a per- son from these communities to a particular local community that is recog- nized in Kenya. This paper addresses this problem by adopting a Robust Non- parametric Kernel Discriminant function to correctly classify the stateless communities in Kenya and compare the performance of this method with the existing techniques through their classification rates. This is because Non- parametric functions have proven to be more robust and useful especially when there exists auxiliary information which can be used to increase preci- sion. The findings from this paper indicate that Nonparametric discriminant classifiers provide a good classification method for classifying the stateless communities in Kenya. This is because they exhibit lower classification rates compared to the parametric methods such as Linear and Quadratic discrimi- nant functions. In addition, the finding shows that based on certain similari- ties in characteristics that exist in these communities that surround the Pem- ba Community, the Pemba community can be classified as Giriama or Rabai in which they seem to have a strong link. In this regard, the study recom- mends the use of the Kernel discriminant classifiers in classifying the stateless persons and that the Government of Kenya consider integrating/recognizing How to cite this paper: Obudho, M.G., Orwa, G.O., Otieno, R.O. and Were, F.A. (2022) Classification of Stateless People through a Robust Nonparametric Kernel Discriminant Function. Open Journal of Statistics, 12, 563-580. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojs.2022.125034 Received: June 7, 2022 Accepted: October 8, 2022 Published: October 11, 2022 Copyright © 2022 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access