146 Borders without belonging: statelessness, displacement, and human insecurity in post-han- theorists, particularly those engaging in Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), have critiqued the ICJ’s reliance on colonial-era treaties and its marginalization of local voices in its adjudication (Nwoko 2015; Bonchuk 2014; LeFebvre 2014). While the judgment respected international legal norms, it failed to deliver justice in any meaningful socio-political sense. The result has been a fragile peace devoid of popular legitimacy, what Ngalim (2016) describes as a “hollow resolution” that neglects indigenous claims to land, identity, and participation in decision-making. Citizenship, too, remains deeply contested. As the Cameroon Multi-Country Office (2017) and Manby (2016) note, the Bakassi case reveals the inadequacies of citizenship regimes in Africa, where legal identity and political belonging are often decoupled. Under Cameroonian law, the process of naturalization remains opaque and exclusionary, leaving many former Nigerian residents of Bakassi in a liminal space of legal non-recognition (Nguindip 2017; Macdonald 2024). This dynamic particularly impacts marginalized groups such as women and youth. Studies have shown that displaced people in Bakassi face layered vulnerabilities, including gender-based violence, exclusion from policy-making, and economic precarity. This study intervenes in the existing literature by shifting the analytical focus from high-level diplomacy to the socio-political aftermath of legal resolution. It explores how formal peace agreements obscure the everyday struggles of those rendered invisible by state-centric conflict narratives. Specifically, the study investigates two interlinked dynamics: (1) the crisis of postcolonial statelessness and the limitations of legal citizenship in contested territories, and (2) the structural consequences of displacement, resource contestation, and governance failure in the Bakassi Peninsula. In doing so, it bridges a critical gap between legal scholarship and the material conditions of marginalized borderland communities in postcolonial Africa. Literature Review The issue of postcolonial borders and their impact on statelessness has been widely examined in African studies scholarship. Researchers have highlighted how colonial-era boundary-making practices ignored the region’s complex ethnic, linguistic, and political landscapes, creating persistent tensions in the post-independence era. This body of literature also underscores the ways in which such arbitrary borders contribute to displacement, contested sovereignties, and the production of stateless populations. Building on this scholarship, the following section situates the Bakassi Peninsula conflict Brazilian Journal of African Studies | Porto Alegre | v. 10, n. 19, Jan./Jun. 2025 | p. 144-169