card, just an electoral card -- but were rejected or never applied for a nationality certificate or passport); whereas others were never registered at birth and applications for all other documents have been rejected; others have obtained documents by paying bribes to intermediaries; and others have travelled to a different “home” country to obtain documents there because they cannot get them where they currently live (or because they prefer to keep that affiliation). Each person has his or her own narrative, and his or her own particular circumstances (of parentage, place of birth and childhood, marriage partner, habitual residence, autonomy of social status, access to connections and money) that will explain these outcomes – but among the groups highlighted in this study are certainly people who fulfil the definition of stateless person under international law. 6.2. Law – and law reform – makes a difference Despite a commonly expressed scepticism that the law is essentially irrelevant, that people “know who they are” and documents don’t change much, the research for this study repeatedly showed how important the law and access to documentation is, not only in shaping the behaviour of officials (as one would hope), but also in creating popular understanding, thus impacting even (or especially) the poorest and most marginalised people. A person’s life can be utterly blocked by the lack of documents proving their right to be in the country where he or she was born and has always lived. In Guinea, a very open nationality law (shaped by the pan-Africanist outlook of the first independence leader, Sekou Touré), has created the common understanding that if you are born in Guinea you are Guinean. Although it is rather the case under the strict interpretation of the law that a person born in Guinea who remains in the country becomes Guinean automatically on majority, the basic structure is understood. By contrast, in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, francophone Africa’s most closed nationality law (at least since 1972) has enabled a national political dialogue in which any effort to extend the right to Ivorian nationality to those who have been excluded is criticised as an effort to mobilise bétail electoral (electoral cattle), even in relation to people who have parents and grandparents born in the country. The most obvious positive impact of law reform since independence has been the steady reduction in gender discrimination in nationality law, most recently in Senegal. Removal of gender discrimination has provided access to a nationality for many thousands of children. Those countries where women are not able to transmit nationality to their husbands or children perpetuate this injustice – and increase the risks of statelessness. Many countries face continuing problems related to poor drafting and implementation of nationality laws at the time of the transition to independence, in particular, where there was no default allocation of nationality but instead the creation of a right to opt or register for those who had migrated before independence. Many were of course never aware of the need to make such an option -- most obviously in case of Côte d’Ivoire, but the same problem impacts other countries also, including Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and others. There has also been a failure to adopt effective laws to regulate nationality in the case of state successions since independence, when territory has been transferred between two states; the International Court of Justice does not consider the legal status or views of the populations affected in its judgements. The failure to adopt laws that resolve the status of those affected by these boundary disputes and transfers of territory has left many thousands trapped by the lack of documents. 90