2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(2) Many of the intractable statelessness situations arise in the context of entrenched discrimination — especially against ethnic minorities. 20 The application of racially defined preferences, plus other ethnically based restrictions, has produced large populations of stateless or marginalised people. 21 Notable examples are the Rohingya in Myanmar, and Haitians in the Dominican Republic. As pointed out by Kriszta Kovács in her comment, even where citizenship practices are externally-focused and concerned with widening the citizenship catchment, for ethnonational populists, ethnicity is the key factor for nonresidential citizenship. 22 Unfortunately, given the huge deference to state sovereignty in the area of nationality and citizenship, explicit and overt racial discrimination is tolerated and sometimes even condoned. A good example of this can be found in art 1(2) of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which provides that the Convention ‘shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens’. 23 This hands-off approach at the international level has historically enabled states to act with impunity when it comes to both citizenship and statelessness. This impunity can currently be observed with the populist Indian Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the Indian state of Assam, where discrimination on various grounds including religion, ethnicity and language linked to the rebuilding of the National Register of Citizens (‘NRC’) has been ongoing for some years. 24 Up to two million people were left off the August 2019 draft of the NRC in Assam, including many from the Muslim minority. This raises the prospect of detention, deportation to Bangladesh and statelessness. An amendment to the citizenship legislation in December 2019 has improved the prospects of citizenship registration for many of these two million, but not for those who are Muslim. 25 Gender discrimination in the context of both citizenship and statelessness is in some ways a less entrenched area of discrimination than race or religion. Gender discriminatory nationality laws that prevent mothers from passing on their nationality to their children are a key cause of childhood statelessness and intergenerational statelessness. Although some problematic situations remain, 26 gender discriminatory nationality laws have ‘toppled like dominoes around the globe’ in recent years. 27 There are now only 25 countries that still deny women the right to 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Allison Bartlett, ‘An Endless Quest for a Home: The Gap in Protection between Stateless Persons and Refugees’ [2012] 33 Immigration and Nationality Review 445, 447, 467. Shaw (n 1) 118. Kriszta Kovács, ‘People, Sovereignty and Citizenship: The Ethnonational Populists’ Constitutional Vocabulary’ (2020) 2(2) Statelessness & Citizenship Review 389. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, opened for signature on 21 December 1965, 660 UNTS 195 (entered into force 4 January 1969). See Regina Menachery Paulose, ‘A New Dawn? Statelessness and Assam’ (2019) 7(1) Groningen Journal of International Law 99. See generally ‘Shoot the Traitors’ — Discrimination against Muslims under India’s New Citizenship Policy (Report, Human Rights Watch April 2020) <https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/04/09/shoot-traitors/discrimination-against-muslimsunder-indias-new-citizenship-policy>. See, eg, Subin Mulmi and Sarah Shneiderman ‘Citizenship, Gender and Statelessness in Nepal: Before and After the 2015 Constitution’ in Tendayi Bloom, Katherine Tonkiss and Phillip Cole (eds), Understanding Statelessness (Routledge 2017) 135−52. Zahra Albarazi and Laura van Waas, ‘Towards the Abolition of Gender Discrimination in Nationality Laws’ (2014) 46 Forced Migration Review 49, 49-50. 380