The Impact of Gender Discrimination on Statelessness where laws are gender neutral, noting that traditional practices of birth registration managed by traditional chiefs often give precedence to men.155 Thus, it appears that even where there has been progress on reforming overtly gender discriminatory laws, the reality for women tends to be impacted by gender discriminatory norms in practice. V. CONCLUSION According to Coomaraswamy, ‘statelessness is a status of profound marginalization’.156As the foregoing discussion shows, this profound marginalisation is particularly acute for stateless women, or those who are at risk of being stateless, who often must navigate multiple and compounded levels of discrimination and risks on the basis of their gender. This article has sought to highlight some of the key direct and indirect forms of gender discrimination that contribute to statelessness, as well as some of the key consequences of statelessness particularly impacting women. The denial of nationality rights comes with a much greater risk of the denial of a wide range of human rights and elevates risks of gender-based violence and exploitation for women. With the exception of the focus on gender-discriminatory nationality laws, this gender gap has received relatively limited attention in statelessness scholarship and practice. This deficit is perhaps not surprising in light of the normative gender gaps persisting in the international legal framework on refugees and statelessness, where the foundational treaties omit reference to sex or gender discrimination. It seems that attention to gender issues in statelessness has long been side-lined. Yet, as the foregoing discussion has sought to demonstrate, gender discrimination significantly impacts statelessness and the risk of statelessness, including in the Southern African region. Despite the gender gaps in the Statelessness Conventions, analysis of relevant international human rights laws and policies, binding in Southern African countries, demonstrates that there are strong legal protections of the rights to nationality, equality and non-discrimination on the basis of gender. Selected regional and domestic developments in the African human rights system indicate that there is also growing awareness of and responses to this issue in the regional context. For example, the affirmation of key protections related to gender discrimination in the AU Draft Protocol on Nationality is significant. However, even the Maputo Protocol provides an exception allowing states to retain gender discriminatory laws with respect to passing nationality to children, indicating that robust protection of equality rights in nationality and statelessness issues still face challenges. Nonetheless, there are encouraging developments in domestic law reform efforts to address these issues in countries throughout Southern Africa. The Unity Dow case from Botswana remains an important example of how gender-discriminatory Radhika Coomaraswamy ‘Beyond borders: Statelessness and the people in between’ International Conference on Statelessness Keynote Speech (26 June 2019), available at https://files.institutesi.org/Keynote_Radhika_Coomaraswamy.pdf, accessed on 12 May 2022. 156 39