158 Borders without belonging: statelessness, displacement, and human insecurity in post-han- tion, including the right to vote or access public education and health services (Macdonald 2024; Hussain 2023). This institutional denial has compounded the statelessness crisis, especially for younger generations born after the territorial transfer who remain undocumented and legally invisible. The denial of legal identity effectively restricts mobility, undermines livelihoods, and perpetuates marginalization (Oyewo 2021; Manby 2016). This exclusionary framework is deeply gendered. Women in Bakassi face a unique set of vulnerabilities due to their compounded status as both displaced persons and members of a historically marginalized gender group. Research indicates that displaced women have been systematically excluded from policy consultation processes and denied access to land ownership and housing rights, both of which are often allocated through patriarchal systems (Dayil 2015; Oke-Chinda 2021). In some cases, they are more susceptible to gender-based violence, exploitation, and trafficking risks exacerbated by the absence of legal identity and state protection (Ezeilo 2010; Sheikh et al. 2016). The failure to integrate a gender-sensitive framework into the post-conflict legal regime has perpetuated a cycle of social and economic dependency for women in Bakassi. The political economy of exclusion is further reinforced by discriminatory narratives around indigeneity and national belonging. In both Nigeria and Cameroon, state discourses often treat displaced Bakassi populations as politically expendable or culturally suspect (Anthony 2014; Akhere 2023). These narratives frame them as neither fully Nigerian nor acceptably Cameroonian, thereby legitimizing their exclusion from social protections and entitlements. As Hart (2022) and Baye (2010) suggest, such exclusion is not merely administrative, it reflects deeper anxieties about sovereignty, identity, and control in contested borderlands. This dual alienation contributes to the broader securitization of displacement and weakens the prospects for meaningful reintegration or restitution. The Bakassi case ultimately exposes the limitations of state-centric conflict resolution mechanisms that prioritize territorial integrity over human security. Although the ICJ ruling adhered to international legal principles, it failed to create pathways for the preservation of the identity and rights of the displaced populations (Nwoko 2015; LeFebvre 2014). In the absence of supranational enforcement, neither Nigeria nor Cameroon has assumed full responsibility for the legal and political rehabilitation of Bakassi’s displaced citizens. As such, Bakassi has become emblematic of a broader failure of transitional justice and inclusive governance in post-colonial Africa’s border Brazilian Journal of African Studies | Porto Alegre | v. 10, n. 19, Jan./Jun. 2025 | p. 144-169